


One True Loves

by TragicLove



Category: Hanson (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Love Triangles, Nobody is Actually Dead, Reunions, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-07-23 12:28:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20008300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TragicLove/pseuds/TragicLove
Summary: Sidney and Zac were lifelong best friends who surprised exactly no one when they fulfilled a prophecy their parents spoke into existence when they were six years old and got married. Life was perfect until tragedy struck, leaving Sidney young and widowed only eighteen months later. Seeking comfort at the loss of her husband and his brother, Sidney and Taylor grow closer until inevitably they fall in love, but four years later they get a phone call that is bound to change everything.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure on the inspiration behind this fic - I read a book this month called [One True Loves](https://www.amazon.com/True-Loves-Taylor-Jenkins-Reid/dp/1476776903/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1UZQ0HSW81ML2&keywords=one+true+loves&qid=1564284746&s=gateway&sprefix=one+true+loves%2Caps%2C180&sr=8-1) by Taylor Jenkins Reid and was completely obsessed with it and it sparked this crazy idea inside of me about a hanfic written around the same premise. I tried to resist the call of the plot bunnies for days and they just would not let up, so this fic was born. I strongly suggest checking out the book if you're into love stories that aren't necessarily straight forward. 
> 
> That being said, I wrote most of this in a fever haze so it is all but finished and I'll likely be posting chapters pretty quickly. It's written in a tense that I've never written before, so I can't promise it is perfect, but I've done my best making sure the quality holds up. I hope y'all love it as much as I do because I'm pretty stoked about this one.
> 
> Also a huge thank you to xhorizen & HarperJean for cheerleading me through this one and a big thank you to slowdownsugar for beta'ing a fic that is for a fandom she isn't even in. Y'all are the real MVPs.

“I can’t believe the size of that rock,” my sister whistles. She reaches over and picks my hand up for what must be the thirtieth time tonight. “Puts mine to shame. God damn it, Taylor,” she glares over at my fiancé who is leaning against the bar waiting for our drinks and then grins. 

“Yours is just fine,” my brother in law Rich slings his arm over her shoulder. They’ve been together since they were thirteen - just a couple of kids - and I couldn’t even remember a life before Rich and Jenny were a thing. It seems to me like it had just always been that way. The earth turns and Jenny and Rich are a pair.

“I guess I should have shacked up with a retired rock star,” Jenny leans into Rich’s embrace, her red painted lips turning up. We all knew that there was no one on the planet Jenny would rather be with. Their happiness level actually makes me sick occasionally. Sure, I’m happy too. But, I’d gone through hell and back to get there. Jenny, to her luck, had never had to learn what it felt like when your heart shatters into tiny fragments on the ground at your feet, or how to pick yourself back up from that. Jenny who has never so much as looked at another man with more than a passing glance was the lucky one. It’s fine, it’s always been fine, I’m not jealous of her, if anything I’m glad I had to go through the fires to get to where I am. It’s made me appreciate my life a little bit more than I might otherwise. And I’m equally glad that Jenny hadn’t. I hate seeing her hurt and I’m thankful that it’s me, not her, who had to rebuild my whole life after it was ripped from me.

“Rockstar?” I lift an eyebrow just as Taylor returns and slides his arm around my waist, his other hand offering me a fresh glass of champagne. “I don’t see any rockstars around here.”

He chuckles softly, presses his lips against my cheek before he takes a swig from his own champagne glass.

We’re at our favorite restaurant celebrating our engagement. Our families and friends have all mostly trickled of, leaving just the four of us. Our little quad that over the years has become something as sure to me as the fact that the sun would rise everyday. 

Taylor and I have been together for a little under three years, but we’ve known each other so much longer. From _the before_ as I’ve taken to calling it. Only in my head, of course. 

Taylor has seen me through my very best and my very worst times. I started off as his brothers annoying best friend, I turned into his own slightly skewed, almost forced together best friend, and I’ve ended up the woman he was going to marry. It’s been a long road, one full of bumps and pot holes and disaster, but it was our road, and now we were finally reaching our destination: Happiness, population 2. 

“I think we’re going to call it a night,” Jenny punctuates her statement with a yawn, as if proving to us that it’s time for them to pack it in. “We’re so happy for you, Sidney, really. It’s about time, you two.”

She smiles and hugs me tight, Rich following suit. They say their goodbyes to Taylor and now it’s just him and I, the way it’s been for so long.

“I think we should go too,” Taylor tightens his arm around my waist, pulling me to his side. He finishes off his flute of champagne and puts it down on the table behind us. “Christen this whole engagement thing, you know?” He grins, pressing his mouth against the side of my face. 

“Right,” I look up at him laughing. I roll my eyes exaggeratedly, but that old familiar low burn is already working its way through my body at the idea of it. “Very important.”

“Girl after my own heart,” he laughs, taking my empty glass and placing it down next to his. “C’mon,” he threads his fingers through mine and leads me out into the cool night air. “I love that dress on you, but I can’t wait to get it off of you.”

I smile up at him, this man. The man of my dreams. Not the one I thought I’d end up with, but the one that had been there to catch me when I fell. I was lucky and I knew it. There were a hundred reasons why Taylor shouldn’t have fallen in love with me, but he had gone ahead and done it anyway. I had a lot to thank him for when we got home. 

He hails us a cab and we climb in. We could walk, but I’m wearing six inch heels and he knows that I’ll start complaining three blocks into the eight block walk. 

He sits directly next to me, his side pressed up against my side, his hand on my thigh. He smiles over at me and leans in and kisses me and I smile against his mouth. I never thought I’d get married again, at first I didn’t even think I could love again, but here we were, living and loving and letting the past fall away, tucking it into a box to keep close and go back to if and when we need to. 

We make it home and we’re barely in the apartment before his hands are underneath my dress, pushing it up and over my head. His shirt is on the floor and I’m fumbling with his belt, the button and the fly of his dress pants. Maybe I’ve had too much champagne, it’s harder than it needs to be. But I get it undone and I hastily push his pants to the ground. He steps out of them, kicking his shoes off in the process and then he lifts me easily, my legs wrap around his waist and he’s carrying me to the bed - our bed, for now and forever, for better and for worse.

He’s over me and inside of me and we’re breathing heavily but completely in sync and I know now for sure that I’ve made all of the right choices. It has been hard for me to get here, to accept that I wasn’t disrespecting my past by ushering in this new future. This future with Taylor. But I know now - I guess I’ve known for a while - this is where I am, with Taylor is where I belong.

\- - -

The sun is streaming in the windows, burning up my naked back. I guess we forgot to shut the shades again. We do that sometimes if we’re distracted, and we were very distracted last night.

Taylor groans as I roll off the bed. I pad to the window and yank the shades shut and turn back towards him. “Go back to sleep,” I say, I lean down and kiss him on the forehead. “I’m gonna make some coffee.”

He nods but slips out of the bed, smiling as I pick up a button down of his from the floor and pull it on. He follows me to the kitchen and shoos me out of the way. He pulls the coffee from the cabinet and spoons it into a filter, starts the coffee pot and then he turns to me, puts his hands on my waist, presses me against the island in the middle of our small kitchen.

His lips are on my neck and I’m giggling, his stubble tickling me. My phone trills from the floor by the door where it’s still in my purse from last night and I swat him away lightly and walk over there. I bend down and fish my phone from my messy bag.

“Your mom,” I say, lifting an eyebrow. “Your phone off again or something?” He shakes his head no, shrugs a shoulder and pulls two coffee mugs down from their cabinet. “Hey Diana,” I press my phone to my ear, a small smile on my face. “Good morning.”

“Sidney.”

The voice coming through the phone isn’t Diana’s, but I know it. I’d know it anywhere, any time. There is no amount of months and years that could pass by me that would erase that voice from my memory. 

I open my mouth, I try to say his name. I try to say anything at all, but the phone drops from my hand and then everything goes black.

\- - -

I open my eyes slowly and then I close them again. I repeat this motion a few times until the picture in front of me isn’t blurry anymore.

Taylor is holding my head in his lap, staring down at me with a look of heavy concern in his eyes.

“You passed out,” he says. He leans down and kisses my forehead and then my left cheek, then my right. “I was just about to call 9-1-1.”

“What?” I say, but it isn’t really a question. I shake my head and I blink a couple more times. “Taylor.” He nods down at me, his mouth twisting into a frown. I can feel it radiating off of him. Fear, already. I can feel it and the air is getting heavier around us. I blink hard one more time and then I push myself into a sitting position. We’re both on the kitchen floor and I notice that it could afford to be swept. It’s funny how our minds work in times of…whatever this was. 

“Sidney, I-”

“Zac,” I say. I shake my head, I mean to stop but it keeps shaking. Left to right, tiny motions. It wont stop. He’s breathing in and out, I can tell he doesn’t know what to say. “He’s alive.” 

Taylor nods, his eyes fall shut and then open quickly. “Looks like it,” he says. His voice is flat, almost emotionless, but I can hear what little emotion is laced in there. I know him and I can hear his fear.

His brother. My husband. He’s supposed to be dead, but dead people don’t use phones. 

“Holy shit, Tay,” I whisper, my hand moves up to cover my mouth. “Zac is alive.”


	2. Chapter 2

**BEFORE**

Zac and I met when we were five. His parents moved in next door to my parents and we became fast friends. We’d spend our days running from one of our houses to the other, becoming attached at the hip quickly.

When we were six, our parents, sitting on the porch of Zac’s parents back yard with sweaty iced teas in their hand, decided that they’d watch us get married someday. Neither of us remembers that happening, of course, but all four of our parents do. They were watching us play in the dirt and they’d all unilaterally decided that we were a match made before we ever even existed.

When we were ten we’d ride our bikes through the streets of Tulsa, Zac always leading the way and me always following. That was our life for so long, Zac showing me where to go and me never deviating from his path. 

We didn’t start dating on purpose. There was never a conversation or a vocal decision. It just happened one night. We were fifteen and at the school dance, dancing to some overly sappy nineties song and then Zac was kissing me, his hands pressed against my lower back, my hands clutching his shoulders. When the song ended he pulled away and he smiled, and from that minute until the minute he was gone, he was the only boy I’d ever kissed. 

On my 18th birthday Zac proposed to me in his back yard surrounded by both of our families. I cried and jumped into his arms, screaming a yes. Most parents probably wouldn’t approve of their children marrying themselves off so young, but ours were just as happy as we were. Everyone knew we were eventually going to get to this moment, so why wait any longer? In our minds we had waited long enough.

We were married at Zac’s families lake house two days after my 19th birthday surrounded by the same family that had watched us grow up and were so sure about us. No matter how sure everybody in our lives were about our life together, no one in the world was as sure about Zac and Sidney as Zac and Sidney. We had no doubts that we would spend the rest of our lives side by side. We married before either of us could even take a legal drink and if you’d have asked either of us then we’d have told you that we’d be together until we were in our graves, and even after that. There was nothing in the world that could stop what we had together.

Zac was on the road a lot and most of the time I followed happily behind. Him and his two older brothers just so happened to be famous. They were in a band together and they seemed to almost always be on tour, which didn’t bother me. I loved getting to see all of the different places that they played in and I loved getting to do it with him by my side. 

We never took a proper honeymoon, instead we hit the road for a five month tour three days after our wedding, and I’m sure for a lot of people that would have been a disappointment, but to us it was perfect. Every night a different place and nothing could be boring with Zac there with me. 

When we returned from tour we finally got a taste of what being together, being a real grown up married couple, would be like. For six blissful months it was just Zac and I in our little one story home that we had bought outright with cash. 

Nothing could touch us. We were as sure of ourselves as any two young adults could be. We knew with certainty that this was the start of a very long journey that we’d be on together, there wasn’t a single question in our minds. 

And then, eighteen months after I married the love of my life, disaster struck. 

It was a rainy day in May when Taylor showed up at our house, walking in like he owned the place, the way he always did. He was supposed to hop aboard a private plane owned by a business associate of the band and fly to LA to sign some papers. He’d be getting right back on the plane and he’d be back home by eleven o’clock that same night. Easy peasy, no problem, except for one. 

Taylor had come down with a particularly violent stomach bug and didn’t feel comfortable getting on the plane at all. He swore he wouldn’t make it, and did we really want him to vomit, or worse, shit himself at thirty two thousand feet in front of this very important colleague? 

We laughed and said that we very much _did_ want to see that happen, but at the end of it all, Zac, never able to say no to Taylor, agreed to make the trip. 

I drove him to the private airport on the outskirts of town and he kissed me goodbye, promising to bring me back something good from LA, and then he walked towards the tiny plane that was waiting to take him from me. He turned and waved at me before walking up the stairs and inside the plane.

And I never saw him again. 

From the only details they could give me, bad weather in California mixed with a mechanical failure had caused the plane to go down over the Sierra Pelona Mountains. The plane was engulfed in flames and no bodies, living or dead, were found inside. They told us that sometimes survivors can be found in the coming days, and they would have a team out surveying the area, but I could hear it in their voices that they didn’t truly believe that. They were sure that Zac and the other three men that were aboard that plane were dead and no amount of barely veiled lies would change that.

If you’ve never felt the person you love be ripped away from you, not by another or because they chose to leave, but by death, finale and finite, I’m not sure I can even explain to you what happened once the police left our house that day.

I managed to pick my phone up off the counter and I managed to scroll to Taylor’s name. I even managed putting the phone to my ear and waiting for him to answer. When he did, the only sound I could get out was a strangled sob. No matter how hard I tried, once that first sob rolled out of me, it was only followed by more, each getting louder and more violent than the last. I remember Taylor saying, ‘stay right where you are, I’ll be there in ten minutes,’ and then I remember him picking me up off of the cold tiled kitchen floor. 

He deposited me lightly on the couch that Zac and I had picked out together, inside of the living room that we had painted together, surrounded by framed photographs of the two of us over our long lifetime together. 

It took me a few moments to realize that the animalistic sounds that were surrounding us were coming from me and when I did it only amplified them. I didn’t know how I got there, how I would get out of there, this place where Zac - my Zac, the person I had built a life with, planned to keep building with until the very end of it - was gone. Dead. They had said the word, so blunt and so in my face, when they’d told me the news. He was dead, and he was never coming home. 

Taylor sat with me, rubbing my back and nearly begging me to calm down long enough to tell him what was going on, and finally, over an hour after he’d peeled me off the floor, I managed to string the words together, to tell him that his little brother, the man I had married less than two years ago, was dead. 

He had somehow forced himself to remain stoic enough to call their older brother, Isaac, and their parents, telling them they needed to meet him at my house right then, and he kept the manner up throughout explaining to them what I’d managed to explain to him about the accident. 

I don’t remember them getting there, I don’t remember anything they said. The only thing I remember is sitting on our couch, my knees pulled up to my chest, staring at the wall across the room while the world fell apart around me. And then they were gone and it was dark outside of the windows and Taylor was still there. Could he stay the night, he’d asked, he didn’t want to be alone, and I’d nodded, not wanting to be alone either. 

He’d gone to the closet and dragged out two blankets, smoothing one over me best he could with my knees still permanently attached to my chest, and then he’s sat against the opposite arm rest of the couch, his head rested back against it, his knees pulled up, feet just inches from me. We didn’t talk, we didn’t move, we just laid there, two people who’d just lost the most important thing all at once.

Right before Taylor drifted off to sleep, I could swear I heard him whisper the words, ‘it should have been me,’ and I hated myself in that moment. For not being able to feel, for not being able to talk or move, but mostly for silently agreeing with him. It should have been him. If it were him, Zac would be there with me. If it were him, my life wouldn’t be over.


	3. Chapter 3

**NOW**

“Sidney,” Taylor calls. I’m in the bathroom staring at myself in the mirror. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I’m not finding it. I ignore his first call and I grab my makeup bag after his second and then he pushes the door open and crosses his arms over his chest. “Did you hear me?”

“Oh,” I look over at him, a tube of mascara in my hand. “Yeah, sorry. What’s up?”

He narrows his eyes at me for a second and then shakes his head. “Where is the emergency credit card? The one we only use for things-”

“That are unexpected,” I finish for him and I see him wince. We don’t need an emergency credit card. We have plenty of money. But, Taylor’s father is an accountant and he’s drilled these kind of things into his kids heads. Zac was - is…Zac _is_ things again, he is no longer a was. He’s alive. And he _is_ the same way.

“Right,” he says. “Do you know where it is?”

“Did you check in the back of your sock drawer?” I ask, I open the mascara and look down at the wand. It’s almost time for a new one. “I think it’s there.” 

“Of course it is,” he says. “I knew that, I don’t know what’s wrong-”

“Zac’s alive,” I cut in. We haven’t been talking about it. We’ve been ignoring it, dancing around it, as if this isn’t our reason for needing the emergency credit card to buy last minute plane tickets to fly to Tulsa. “That’s what’s wrong with you, Tay. Zac’s alive.”

“Sidney,” he sighs. “You said you’re fine but you’re-”

“I’m fine,” I snap. “I’m fine and I don’t want to…I _can’t_ talk about this right now, okay?” I lean into the mirror and I brush mascara through one set of eyelashes and then the other, and then I do it again to each side.

“We have to talk about it eventually.”

“Well, we’re probably about to spend all day on a plane together, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to talk about it.”

“Sidney,” he says quietly. He slips into the bathroom and stands right behind me. He looks at me in the mirror, our reflections stare back at each of us. “This is a shock…it is for me too, but we can’t…we have to be a team right now. I need you.”

I close my eyes for a second and sigh. He’s right. I’m acting like an asshole. “I’m sorry,” I lean back lightly against him. “I’m a dick.”

He laughs softly and the sound makes the corners of my mouth lift. Taylor has always been the stronger of us two. He’s been my rock. I need to pull my shit together. I toss the mascara tube down into the sink and I turn and slide my arms around his waist. I tilt my head up to look at him and he looks down at me.

“I love you,” it’s barely above a whisper. I press up on my tip toes and he leans down. Our mouths meet and it’s sweet and chaste and then it isn’t and we’re clinging to each other, our mouths moving sloppily, full of need. 

He lifts me and places me down on the counter that surrounds the sink and he presses forward. My dress bunches up around my thighs and I can feel him through his jeans and my panties. He’s hard and I’m ashamed that my body reacts to him in this moment. It doesn’t feel like the right moment, Zac is alive thirteen hundred miles from this very bathroom waiting for us. But he pushes forward again and I sigh, my hands falling to his jeans. They’re down and he’s inside of me before I can think twice about it. It’s frantic and quick, our open mouths are pressed together and he’s moving in and out of me while I move against him and we don’t say it, we don’t say anything, but it feels a bit like we both know this might be the last time and we just want to _feel_. Feel each other, feel together, just in case we never do again. 

I finish and he finishes seconds later. We’re quiet about it, like we’re trying to hide it from someone who might be listening in. He kisses me lightly and then cleans himself up, pulls his jeans back on, tucks his shirt in. He says he’d better go buy those tickets and he’s gone. 

I sit on the sink for a few minutes, going over the events of the day so far in my mind. Zac is alive. He’s breathing and living and no longer dead. He’s in Tulsa, in the place we used to live, and he’s waiting for me and I’m here with Taylor. Taylor, the man I’m supposed to marry in less than four months. The man I’ve promised to now spend my life with. 

But that was before the man I’d already pledged to spend my life with was back, and now I have no idea what I’m doing.

\- - -

It’s almost midnight and we’ve just landed and walked out of the airport. The air is warmer here than it is in New York and I take off my sweatshirt and tie it around my waist. Taylor grabs my hand and walks me towards his mothers idling car. He opens the passenger door and motions for me to get in. I do and he closes it behind me before he climbs into the backseat.

None of us say anything. We all just sit in the car as if each one of us are waiting for another person to break the silence first. Diana finally turns and squeezes my hand and then smiles back at Taylor.

“I’m happy to see you guys,” she says and then she turns back so she’s righted in her seat and she puts the car in drive and pulls out of the spot she was waiting in.

“How is he?” Taylor asks quietly.

“He’s…” she shakes her head, never taking her eyes off of the road ahead of her. “Surprisingly well. He’s in good spirits. He’s…he’s thinner than he was, you know, before.” Her mouth turns down slightly but she rights it quickly. “His hair is longer, needs a cut, really,” she smiles sadly, her eyes darting over to me before looking back out at the road. “He’s excited to see you guys.”

Neither of us says anything. I don’t know what to say and I’m sure that Taylor is feeling the same way. How do you ask the question that I know we are both asking silently? How do you ask if your husband knows you’re gearing up to marry his brother?

“Just so you guys…well, I hope it’s okay,” Diana says hesitantly, and now I know I’m going to get an answer. I didn’t even have to ask. “We haven’t told Zac…about…well-”

“He doesn’t know about us,” Taylor finishes for his mother and she sighs and nods. She looks at me briefly again and I see her eyes dart to the mirror look at Taylor. We’re getting awfully close to the house now and my stomach is turning. I’m sure I’m not going to make it.

“Please pull over,” I say and she looks at me again, but doesn’t pull over. “Diana I need you to pull over, I’m going to be sick.”

Diana harshly pulls the car onto the side of the road and I throw my door open. I stumble two steps out and then my hands are on my knees and I’m emptying my stomach into he grass. Did I eat anything today? I can’t remember, but I’m almost sure I didn’t.

Taylor is beside me, rubbing my back, handing me some fast food restaurant napkins and I only realize that I’m crying when I wipe my face and then stand up. Taylor frowns, pulling me into his arms.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “It’s alright, it’s just Zac. Our Zac.”

I nod and he tightens his hold, kissing me on the top of my head. He helps me back in the car and Diana holds out a piece of gum for me to take. I try to smile but I’m not sure it takes.

Our Zac. Our Zac is alive. It still doesn’t feel real.

\- - -

We stand outside the front door of Zac and Taylor’s childhood home. My hands are shaking. Diana pauses, her hand over the doorknob and then she turns and she wraps me in the tightest hug she can manage. I let out a sigh into her hair and she squeezes again before she lets me go.

“It’ll be okay, darling. We’ll figure it out as we go,” she smiles and then she turns and hugs Taylor, whispers something in his ear, but I can’t hear it. 

He smiles down at her and then he leans over and hugs me. He kisses me chastely, once and then once more. He squeezes my hand.

“I love you,” he says, as if he’s reminding me, making sure I know. 

“I know,” I nod. “I love you too.”

And then Diana opens the door. 

We step into the living room and it’s empty. I let out a sigh of relief. I don’t know why because I actually want to see him. I want to set my eyes on him, see his face, see his body there in front of me. Proof that he’s alive hasn’t been given to me in physical form yet and I need it. I crave it. I want to see his eyes, I want them to look back at me. I want to feel his skin, make sure that it’s real. 

“Walker?” Diana calls through the house but no one answers. She moves into the kitchen and leaves us standing there and I look over at Taylor. He’s nervous, I can tell by the way he’s fiddling with the bracelets on his wrist. His eyes meet mine and he frowns for a second before he smiles. He closes the gap in between us and wraps his arms around me.

“I’m right here, Sidney, okay?” He says into my hair. “I got you, I’m here. If it becomes too much, you just say the word and we’re out of here.”

I nod against his chest and my eyes are stinging and I _really_ don’t want to cry again. I release myself from his hold and I can tell he needs it so I look up at him and I half smile, the most I can manage. “I love you, Taylor.”

He nods. He leans down and kisses me quickly and then Diana is back in the room with us. I can see that she’s torn. She’s been so happy that Taylor and I have found happiness in each other and now she sees that for us to keep that happiness now seems impossible. 

“They’re out back,” she says and she motions towards the kitchen. 

We make our way through the house to the sliding glass door that opens into the backyard. She pulls it open and steps out, Taylor following behind her, me next. We walk out onto the patio and I don’t see him at first. There’s Isaac and his wife, their young child running across the lawn chasing the dog. There’s Walker at the grill, smells like burgers. And then I turn my head to the left and time slows down.

It’s like suddenly the whole world is engulfed in a thick, sticky substance and it’s making everyones movements impossibly slow. Zac turns and his eyes land on Taylor and he smiles, and then he sees me and his smile takes on a completely different form. His eyes squint slightly and his forehead squishes up. He puts the drink he’s holding down on the picnic table and then he’s moving. Closer, closer, and then he’s right in front of me. He stands there for a second and he’s taking me in. I watch his eyes sweep over my entire being from the top of my head to the beat up ballet flats on my feet and then he’s looking at my face again and he shakes his head slowly before his arms are around me and I’m off my feet and he’s twirling me around before putting me back on the ground.

“Holy shit, Sidney,” he breaths into my ear. “Holy shit.”

I nod, my head moving all on its own, and I keep nodding until he leans in and wraps his arms around me again, this time hugging me while I’m on solid ground. 

“Finally,” he’s still hugging me, his arms are warm, but Diana was right, he is thinner. I can feel his bones through his t-shirt. “I have you back with me.”

My eyes meet Taylor’s where he’s standing behind Zac and the look on his face crushes me. He looks like he’s afraid, like he’s sad, like he wishes we could go back to this morning and have the phone never ring. I can physically feel my heart crack down the middle and my eyes close. I had half thought that I’d see Zac and it would change everything. I’d instantly be transported back to when he was the only man I had ever loved and there would be no questions, nothing to fight. 

But, it didn’t happen like that. All that I can see is two men who are of equal importance to me. One has his arms around me and one is staring at me like he’s afraid I’ll vanish right before his eyes and I have no idea what I’m going to do, because in the best case scenario I’m going to have to choose between them. I’ll have to keep one and let one go and that isn’t something I’m sure I’ll ever be prepared to do.


	4. Chapter 4

**BEFORE**

I moved through the days after Zac’s death in something of a haze. It was like everything I saw and heard was underwater. They’d told us that the chances of Zac being recovered were less than one percent and it would be wise of us to move along with…whatever it is you’re supposed to move along with after someone who you love dies.

Do you know what it’s like to plan and hold a funeral for someone when there is no body to bury? No physical form to say goodbye to? It feels like you’re stepping into a void, there is no closure, no finality to it. There is just an empty space where a body should be and you can’t really figure out if it’s better or worse. It just is, and what it is is horrible. 

The day after we got the news the band put out a statement to their fans. They wanted them to hear it from them first before it hit the news circuit, which could happen at any time. The outpouring was phenomenal. A bunch of faceless women who I had never met but who had somehow spent the entire time Zac and I had been together hating me suddenly loved me. There were boxes upon boxes of consolation cards arriving, so quickly that we couldn’t figure out what to do with them all. I’m ashamed to admit that after the first bundle I had started throwing them directly into the recycling bin. The last thing that I wanted was to read a bunch of words from people who didn’t know me and could never understand the pain I was going through. I understood that they’d lost something too, these fans of the guys. With Zac gone the band was no longer, and I’m sure that it was gutting for them. But, my husband had been ripped from me and I felt like if there was any time in my life where I could get away with being a little selfish, it was then. Zac was mine and I didn’t want to share my grief. I certainly didn’t want to share it with people who I didn’t know, people who had spent years behind computer screens saying some of the nastiest things about me that you could say about a person.

A week to the day after we found out that Zac was gone, we held his funeral. We’d - well, really Isaac and Taylor - had asked the public to please respect us in our time of grieving, and to convince them to just stay away, we had a public memorial planned for the following week. But a few of them snuck in anyway, and we just allowed it. They stuck to the back of the church during the service and didn’t bother any of us. 

If I’m honest, they probably could have stripped down, lit themselves on fire and ran around the cemetery and I wouldn’t have noticed. The only thing I could focus on was the fact that my husband wasn’t here. He wouldn’t be walking in the door at night anymore, yelling out my name to see which room of the house I was in. He’d never write a song or climb on a tour bus again. We’d never have the three kids we talked about, we’d never have grandchildren to spoil. I would never see him again and my body and my brain were having a hard time swallowing that information, its response to it seemed to be to just shut down. 

I didn’t speak at his service and I didn’t even bother to show up at the memorial for the fans. I took up permanent residence on my couch, staring at the television, completely unaware of what was happening on it. 

Taylor was staying with me. I think his parents, my own parents, and him himself were a little concerned that if I were left to my own devices I’d forget how to do basic life things like shower and feed myself. I’m not completely sure that they were wrong and Taylor was an absolute angel to have around in those days. 

Me? I’m not so sure angel would describe me then.

Three weeks after the funeral, four weeks after Zac’s death, Taylor walked into the house loaded with fast food and iced coffees. He set them down on the coffee table and plopped himself down on the couch next to me.

“I got you all of the things you like. I didn’t know what you’d be in the mood for so…went all in, I guess,” he smiled over at me and leaned forward to grab one of the iced coffees. “Thought you could use this, too.”

I stared at him and then shook my head, closing my eyes.

“Sidney, you have to start…getting back to normal.”

I opened my eyes slowly and locked my gaze on his. He frowned and held the iced coffee out to me again.

“Come on, just drink some of it. Coffee always makes me feel better.”

“My husband is dead,” I said quietly. “I don’t think coffee is going to fix it.” 

He sighed and held it out further. “I’m not saying it’s going to fix it, Sid. Come on, take the cup.”

I reached out and took the cup from him. I looked down at it, almost appreciating that it seemed to be made exactly the way that I liked it. That washed away quickly and before I even contemplated my actions or had time to talk myself out of it the cup was flying across the room, slamming into the wall opposite us and dropping to the floor. 

“Holy shit,” Taylor muttered. He looked at me for a second and then got up and left the room. He came back with a roll of paper towels and the trash can. He quietly cleaned up the whole mess, never looking behind him. I watched him as he calmly picked up the cup, the straw, the lid, and dropped each of them into the trash. He ran the paper towel over the floor and wall and then dropped them in the trash too. He went back into the kitchen and then he was back on the couch, sitting next to me, looking at me expectantly.

“What?” I half whispered, half hissed.

“You gotta try, Sidney.”

“Try what?”” I shook my head. “Try to bring Zac back? You’re looking at me like there is something wrong with me, but look at you! You’re not even…you don’t even care!” I reached forward and swung my arm, knocking the rest of the food off the table, every bag landing in a pile off its side. Taylor grabbed up his iced coffee to save it, his eyes going wide.

“I care, Sidney. I care a lot,” he said calmly, taking a sip of his iced coffee and then placing it back down on the table. “I care so much it’s ridiculous. He’s my brother, you know. You’re not the only one who lost him. But…Sidney, this is our new normal. He’s not coming back and we have to pull it together, we have to move on.”

I stared at him blankly. I don’t know how long it was, but I just stared at him staring back at me. And then I broke.

Every tear I hadn’t cried poured out of me all at once. My hands were over my face and my knees were up to my chest and I was rocking back and forth, and then Taylor was right next to me, cradling me in his arms. He whispered soothing things into my ear and ran his fingers through my hair. I think we sat like that for hours, when I finally looked at the clock after, it was after two in the morning and I was exhausted. My eyes were burning and my chest felt simultaneously empty and heavy. I missed him so much, but I realized in that moment that I missed _me_ too.

“I’ll be okay, Taylor,” I looked over at him when he’d finally released me from his embrace. “I just need time.”

“I know,” he nodded. “I’m here…for however long you need me. And if you want me to fuck off, I can do that, too. I’d rather not, but I can.”

“No,” I laughed a little and it shocked me. “You’ve been a big help.”

“You laughed, Sid,” Taylor smiled. “I haven’t heard you laugh since-”

“I know,” I frowned. “It doesn’t feel right…without him here.”

“He’d want us to laugh. He’d want us to keep living. He’d never want you to go on like this.”

I nodded. Hearing the words, hearing Taylor spell it out for me, I knew he was right. I had to get back to the living because I was lucky enough to still be a part of it. Zac didn’t have that luxury anymore and carrying on as if I had joined him in death suddenly almost felt like spitting in his face. I needed to pull it together and I was going to do it. Starting right then.

\- - -

“You’re up early,” Taylor walked into the kitchen and smiled at me. He grabbed a mug from the cabinet and met me at the counter. “I was just coming out here to start the coffee, but you’ve taken care of that.”

“I’m heading to work,” I smiled up at him. “Do you think you could give me a ride?”

“Work?” He lifted an eyebrow. “Are you sure you’re-”

“I’m ready,” I nodded. “Thanks to you.”

I reached over and squeezed his hand before dropping it. I grabbed the coffee pot and filled his mug and then filled my own. 

“Do you think…can you give me a ride? I don’t…I’m just not in the mood to drive myself.”

“Of course. When are you leaving?”

“Now?”

He grinned and shook his head. “Good thing these mugs can travel.”

\- - -

My first day back at the record store was a bit of a blur. My parents were glad to have me back, my taking so much time off left them down an employee and it was just the three of us, my sister Jenny and a few part time kids from the local college.

I stayed to myself, restocking and cleaning up. I didn’t think I was ready to be interacting with the public yet. It seemed like every single person in Tulsa knew Zac and wanted to talk about him and what a joy he was to all he touched. I wasn’t interested in that. Right then, to me, Zac was mine and mine alone and I didn’t want to share his memory with anyone. Except maybe Taylor, who in my mind had earned his place. 

By the time five o’clock rolled around I was ready to get back home. I might have pushed it a little for the first day back, but that was how I usually did things. It was all or nothing and this had to be no different. I had to jump back into life headfirst, because as I’d learned quickly and harshly, we only get one of them. I couldn’t waste mine, not anymore. 

Just as I was clocking out at the register Taylor breezed into the store, two iced coffees in hand.

“To make up for the other ones,” he grinned, handing me one.

“I’ll try not to throw this one.”

“Thanks. Those things aren’t cheap, you know.”

“Taylor!” My mom was suddenly in front of us and she was hugging Taylor. Him and I were staring at each other over her head, both of us with our eyebrows drawn together. I shrugged. I had no idea why my mom was suddenly feeling so affectionate. “Thank you so much for taking care of our girl.” Ahh. That explained it. “We’re so thankful for you. And if you ever, I mean ever need anything, Chuck and I are just a call away.”

“Thank you Mrs. Houston,” Taylor smiled when she let him go. “I just wanted to make sure this one was okay.” He put a hand on my shoulder and then jerked his head towards the door. “Ready to go?”

“More than,” I smiled. I hugged my mother goodbye and Taylor and I made our way outside.

“You know what I think we need?” Taylor pulled the car door open for me. I climbed in and looked up at him. 

“What?”

“Alcohol. My treat. Let’s go to the store.”

\- - -

Taylor quickly became my best friend. I didn’t have many people in my life outside of my family and the Hanson family. It was hard to keep up relationships when you were jet setting all over the place with your boyfriend turned husband and it was even harder to make new friends when you were conditioned to wonder if everyone who wanted to get close to you had a motive because of who your partner was. Losing Zac was like losing my husband and my best friend all in one and I found that I was quickly filling the friendship hole left in my life with Taylor.

He didn’t seem to mind. In fact, it seemed a lot like he was doing the same thing with me. 

For six months Taylor was practically living in my house. He was also stocking the pantry and fridge, keeping my dishes clean and tidying up while I wasn’t home and I couldn’t help but be thankful. I told him a million times that I didn’t need him to take care of me, but he seemed adamant about it and to be honest, I was growing so used to having him around that I didn’t want to push him away. 

Everything was going great for us. We were figuring out how to move on from Zac’s death and we were laughing and smiling again. That’s not to say there weren’t bad moments, because there were. Taylor would frequently find me in the bathroom sitting on the closed toilet lid, my head in my hands, crying because I just remembered that Zac would never be inside of our home again. Some days I’d find him sitting on the back porch with his guitar, quietly strumming and singing songs that I knew Zac had wrote. But, most of the time we were trucking along in life, figuring out the next steps as we got to the ones before them. I was confident that we were both going to make it through this and come out the other side.

It’s funny how you never know the day that changes everything is going to be that day until it’s already happened. You can’t predict it, there are no warnings. It just sneaks up on you and in a moment you realize that from then on out everything will be different.

That’s what happened on a particularly good night for the both of us. We were sitting across from one another on the living room floor, several empty beer bottles spread out around us. We were playing a surprisingly rousing round of UNO and we were laughing. We were laughing so much and so hard that my stomach hurt and my eyes were leaking tears. I hadn’t laughed like that in over six months and for a few blissful moments I had forgotten all of the troubles that life had thrown at me.

Taylor made me laugh again mid-sip of beer and I actually spit my beer out. I had always thought that was just something people did on TV and in the movies, but I learned that night that it was a real threat, drinking and laughing hysterically. 

Taylor nearly howled with laughter and he took my beer bottle from me, settling it down on the table behind him. He grabbed a napkin and leaned over, pressing it to my face, wiping gently to get all of the spilled beer off of my skin.

I saw it as his eyes changed and I felt it when his hand stilled. And then he leaned in and he kissed me.

And that’s when I knew that everything had changed.


	5. Chapter 5

**NOW**

Before we got on the plane Taylor had come to me, a silver necklace in his hands. He slipped my engagement ring off of my finger and slid it onto the chain and then he put it around my neck. “Now it’s closer to your heart,” he said, but we both knew the real reason for the change. Zac had no way of knowing about us, and as Diana had said, he probably wouldn’t be ready to right yet.

Now as I’m sitting here on Diana and Walker’s old wooden swing chair with him I know we made the right choice. The last thing we need is for Zac to be thrown for a loop. How do you explain that to your husband? Sorry that I’m about to marry your brother, thought you were dead, okay bye? 

“Your hair is different,” he says, startling me out of my thoughts.

“Yeah,” I say, shrugging. “Cut it, dyed it, you know.”

“It looks nice,” he nods a couple of times. “I miss the dark brown though.”

I stare at him for a couple of seconds. He misses the dark brown? I’ve thought my husband was dead for almost four years and he misses the color my hair was the last time he saw me? “Oh,” I say in place of all of that.

“You’re still beautiful,” he smiles. I smile. I can’t figure out what else to do or say so I just smile. “This is…”

“Awkward,” I finish. It is and it makes me want to cry. Awkward wasn’t in our vocabulary. We were always so easy with one another. We were two sides of the same coin. We were soulmates. We were never awkward or out of place. Never in our entire lives together have I ever felt this way around Zac and it’s making me crawl out of my skin.

“This isn’t us, Sid,” he frowns and I look down at my lap. 

“I know.”

“It must be a shock,” he says and he reaches over and takes my hand. His fingers slip in between my own and half of me is silently screaming in joy. Our hands still fit together the way they always have. We still fit like we were made to do just that. The other half of me is cringing, worrying about where Taylor is. Can he see us? Does his chest hurt like mine does? I feel like I’m betraying my fiancé with my own husband and it’s making me a bit crazy inside. 

“That’s putting it lightly,” I respond and then close my eyes. Idiot. I’m an idiot. 

I still don’t know what happened to him. Diana pulled me aside before we moved to the swing together and warned me that he didn’t want to talk about it. He told her he wasn’t ready and her and Walker had decided that no one would push him until he was. But it was eating me alive, I wanted to stand up and scream, insist he tell me where exactly he’d been for the last four years. How is he only here sitting in front of me now? If he’s alive and well as he appears to be, why wasn’t he here already?

“Are you still living in the house?” He asks and I look back up at him. His eyes are clear and he’s looking at me with no expectation. His hand is still in mine and my palm is starting to sweat a little. I feel a little self-conscious. Around my husband. My best friend since I was six. The whole thing is absurd.

“No,” I say and then I shake my head. “I mean, I still…I still own it. We - I stay there when I’m in town, but I don’t-”

“In town?” He repeats, his one eyebrow high on his forehead.

“Yeah,” I nod. “I, um. I moved, a few years ago. To New York.” 

“New York,” he repeats. His face is confused. His voice is steady and even. 

“Yeah, I had to…I just-”

“You had to get out of here,” he finishes for me and I nod, looking down at my knees. 

“It must have been so hard,” he says quietly, his other hand grabs my free hand and holds onto it. He’s so close to me. This was all I wanted at one point, Zac here, touching me, breathing the same air I’m breathing, but now that it’s happening I’m crawling out of my skin, I’m aching for him to drop my hands. I want to run away. 

It’s not because I don’t want him here. It’s not even because I don’t want him to touch me. I _do_ want those things. I keep staring at his lips. I want to kiss them. I want to run my fingers through his hair. I want to wrap myself in his arms and stay there for approximately six hundred years. 

But Taylor - my Taylor, the man who has loved me through the absolute worst and lowest time of my life, the man I’m slated to exchange vows with and spend my life with - is standing across the lawn. I can feel his eyes on us. He’s watching and I know his heart is hurting. My heart is breaking when it should be coming back together. 

I love them both. I knew I’d never stopped loving Zac before this, how could I have? I knew I would love him for the rest of my life. He didn’t leave me because he wanted to, he left me because he was - well, he wasn’t dead, was he? But, he hadn’t been gone because it was his choice, we never broke up, he’d left me because he’d left everybody. He was gone, stuck somewhere. Now he is back and he is holding my hands and my heart is pumping, every pulse point jumping erratically. I have no idea what to say, I have less idea what to do. The inside of my head is growing so loud so I shut my eyes. I just need it to calm down in there, I need to be able to think. 

His mouth. It’s pressed lightly to the corner of my own. It’s gone a second later but the area where it was is tingling. I open my eyes and he’s looking at me, he’s smiling. He squeezes my hand.

“It’s gonna be okay, Sid,” he says. He nods once, like he knows he’s right, like there is no other option. 

I look over to where Taylor was standing but he’s turned away now. He’s walking away. He’s slipped into the house and I’m sure it’s because of me. This. Us. 

Zac.

My life has gotten so simple. It’s gone back to when it was easy and nearly carefree. In less than a full day, all of that is gone. I know at this very moment that nothing will be the same. Never again.

\- - -

Taylor messes with the lock on the front door of my house - our house - he had moved in officially before we decided to relocate to New York. It’s stuck and he’s muttering to himself, mostly unintelligible. _Fuck. Stupid. Replaced. Empty house. Shoulda sold it._

My chest constricts. I could never sell my house. My house had, for so long, been the one solid tie to Zac that I had left. The thought of getting rid of it, someone else living between those walls that belonged to us…it was unfathomable to me. 

He gets the door open and we move into the house. He pulls our carryon bags inside and leaves them by the door. Mine falls over. He looks down at it and shakes his head and heads for the kitchen.

I stand in the living room and look around. I haven’t been here in over a year. Everything is dusty. I’ll need to clean tomorrow if we’re going to be staying here long. I have no idea how long we’ll be here. Should we go home soon? Should we stay? I don’t have answers to my own questions.

Taylor reappears, a beer bottle in his hand. “Think this is still good?” He holds it up. “Been in the fridge the whole time.” He uncaps it and tosses the cap down on the coffee table. He takes a long swig and I watch his face contort. “Not good,” he says, going back into the kitchen. I hear the sink turn on and then the bottle fall into the bin, then he’s back, keys in hand. We borrowed his parents second car, they figured we’d need it. “I’m going to the store.” He says. “Need something…to take the edge off.” His body is stiff. He’s radiating discomfort. I want to hug him. I want to take him in my arms and tell him it’s all going to be okay. We’re going to get through all of this together. Nothing is going to change. But I can’t, so I just nod.

“Okay.”

He leaves and I sink down onto the couch. It’s so quiet, I can’t stand the quiet right now. I pull my phone out of my pocket and there are already two texts from Zac.

_Seeing you was like coming up for air. I was afraid you’d moved on._

_I can’t wait for things to get back to normal. I feel like I’m living in someone else’s life. I know we need time but I can’t wait to see you again._

I feel my eyes stinging and I drop my phone down onto the cushion next to me. I want to get up and run back to New York, leave this all behind. I don’t know what to do. That’s been running through my mind a lot, the not knowing. I don’t know how to make it go away. I wish someone could tell me, I wish there was an answer. But there isn’t.

Every minute that ticks by gets me closer to needing to be honest. I have to tell Zac the truth. And then I’ll have to make a choice. I close my eyes, Zac’s face filling up my vision. Thinner, different, but it’s Zac. My chest hitches and I let out a breath. He’s here and he’s alive and that’s all I’ve ever wanted, so why does it feel like a part of me is dying?

\- - -

My shoulder is shaking. Someone is gripping it, moving my body.

“Sidney,” Taylor’s voice. Taylor’s hand. I move my hand up to cover his and I open my eyes. He’s crouched down at the side of the couch. His eyes are bloodshot and he smells like booze and cigarettes. 

“You were smoking,” I say, pulling my body up so that I’m sitting.

“Guilty,” he shrugs. “You were asleep when I got back. Been out on the patio. It’s the middle of the night, you should go to bed.”

“Will you come with me?” 

He nods and holds his hand out for me to take. I stand from the couch and he leads me to the bedroom. Neither of us even bother to change out of our clothes, we just climb beneath the covers and pull them over us. 

I hear Taylor sigh and then he’s right behind me, his arm around my waist and his face buried in my hair. His fingers brush over my stomach lightly, back and forth, creating little goosebumps underneath my t-shirt. 

“Tell me it’s going to be okay,” he whispers and I squeeze my eyes shut. I’ve never lied to Taylor before. I don’t want to lie to him now. “Tell me, Sid.”

“I can’t,” I whisper. His fingers stop moving. He pulls me even closer to him, his other arm snaking underneath me. He links his fingers over my stomach. He’s holding on to me and I know he’s doing it in more ways than one. He doesn’t want to let go. I don’t either. How do we figure this out? How do we make it this work where no one gets hurt?

We can’t. We both know it. 

“Goodnight,” he whispers. “Love you.”

“Love you,” I repeat and my heart twists inside my chest, because I do. I do, so much, I’m just not sure that it’s enough.


	6. Chapter 6

**BEFORE**

After the night Taylor had kissed me we both completely freaked out.

I started working too many hours, spending my days and nights at the record store. When we’d close, I’d stay behind and arrange and rearrange our shelves. I could tell that my parents were growing concerned but they didn’t want to push me.

A month into this Jenny cornered me five minutes before closing. She’d found me in the back office and she’d shut the door, standing with her back against it, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Go home, Sidney,” she’d said. 

“Well, you’re blocking the door.”

“I want you to go home and I want you to call Taylor,” she said. “He told me…everything,” she frowned a little bit and then shook her head. “You’re both hurting and you’re both confused. But, you need each other.”

“We can’t-”

“I don’t care about all of the extras,” she held up a hand, cutting me off. “I care about the fact that you’re isolating yourself. You’re overworking yourself, you’re cutting everyone out. I know you miss Zac, I miss him too. We all do. But you can’t handle it this way. This way isn’t handling it. You see that, don’t you?”

I was quiet for a few moments and then I nodded, walking forward and hugging her. “Thank you,” I said quietly. “I know I’m hard to deal with right now, I just-”

“I know,” she said, squeezing me and then backing up, her hands on my shoulders. “I know and it’s okay. We all get it. But you need to find your way back to happy and Sid…if that’s Taylor-”

“It’s not,” I said. “It can’t be. It was just a kiss, it’s not-”

“It’s okay if it is,” she smiled. “And it’s okay if it’s not, but he’s your friend and you need each other. Go home and call him. And take the day off tomorrow.”

I nodded, thanking her again and then I grabbed my purse and walked out of the store.

\- - -

Taylor pulled his front door open and I held up the brown bag of takeout I held in one hand and the bottle of Jack I had in the other. “Peace offering?”

He looked at me and then slowly his mouth turned up in a smile and he opened the door wider. “Come in.”

I walked to the kitchen and grabbed two glasses, filling them with ice and then filling them halfway with Jack. I opened the fridge, relieved that he had cans of Coke inside. I topped off our drinks and then turned around, jumping a little when he was right behind me.

“Here you go, sir,” I smiled, holding out his glass.

“Thanks,” he took it, taking a sip and then making a face and blowing out. “Whoa, Sid. You trying to get me drunk?”

“Maybe,” I shrugged, walking towards the living room. “I think we both need it.”

We ate the Chinese take out I had shown up with. We watched a movie. What we didn’t do for the first two and a half hours that I was there was talk. About anything. Finally, while Taylor was scrolling through the guide on the television trying to pick our next thing to watch, I turned my body towards his on the couch.

“Tay, we should-”

“Talk?” He asked, not taking his eyes from the TV. “We probably shouldn’t. Not about…well.”

“We really should,” I said, leaning forward and putting my empty glass down on the coffee table. “You kissed me.”

“It was a month ago, Sid.”

“I know, but it still happened.”

“It was…” he sighed, shaking his head. “I was upset. I missed Zac. Hell, I still miss him. I was emotion driven and I shouldn’t have-”

“So, you didn’t mean it?”

“I-”

“Taylor.”

He turned and looked at me, his blue eyes were down cast and he just looked so sad. I could feel it, his sadness flowing from him and into me. 

“I miss him too, Tay,” I said quietly. “I miss him every single day, but I miss you too.”

“Me too,” his eyes turned up to meet mine. “So much.”

“God, I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I breathed out and then I leaned forward and I kissed him.

He hesitated but then his arms went around me, the remote falling from his hand and landing with a dull thunk on the couch cushion. His hands were pressed against my back and our mouths moved together slowly.

It was a gentle, almost unsure. His hands were moving and mine were too. One landed on his neck, my fingers in his hair and I pulled his face closer to mine, wanting to feel it more. Wanting to feel. 

And I did. A burst of care and want and longing. I realized for sure when his tongue slid into my mouth and his fingers dug into my lower back that it wasn’t because I missed Zac. I did, I did every minute I was breathing, but the reality that I’d been trying to fight off since that night on my living room floor when Taylor kissed me settled down over me making my heart twist and my chest clench. I _wanted_ Taylor. 

I think I knew it before. I think I realized it sometime between him all but moving into my house and kissing me, but I was too scared to open myself up to it. So instead I pushed it away. But, now we were there, in Taylor’s living room and his hands had slid up the back of my shirt and his skin felt _so_ good on mine and his lips felt like breathing again, so when my body moved, taking me from my spot next to him on the couch to my new spot, one leg on each side of him, over him on his couch, I didn’t run. I didn’t get up and I didn’t grab my purse and leave as fast as I could. 

Instead I let his hands remove my shirt and I let mine do the same to his. And I backed up and whispered ‘this doesn’t change how we feel about him,’ and he nodded, his eyes glossed over. ‘We love him, but we’re living,’ I said while the rest of our clothes fell away. ‘We’re moving on.’

I lowered myself onto him, holding my breath until I felt like I could breathe again without falling apart. His hands were on my hips, grasping me, but lightly. His eyes were locked on mine when we started moving, tiny gasps of air the only sound we were making. I felt months of emotion bubble up in my chest and then my face was wet with my own tears, but they didn’t feel so much like loss. They felt more like opening up to the new world in which I had been forced to live. 

Everything felt new and sudden and unlike anything I had felt before. Not bigger, not more - just different. 

When his hand slid up to the back of my head and he sighed into my mouth, our bodies moving together perfectly, I felt myself give up all of the ghosts and demons that were trapping me in this place where I was a shell of my former self. I let go and I let him in and not for the first time, as you know, I knew my life had changed.

\- - -

I blinked awake and it took me a little while to figure out exactly where I was. Taylor was on his back on the couch and I was on my side next to him, one leg slung in between his, my head on his chest. There was a throw blanket pulled over us and at some point before we fell asleep I must have pulled on his shirt and he must have pulled on his boxers, but aside from that we were completely exposed - in more ways than just physically.

He stirred underneath me and he turned his head, smiling. “Morning.” His voice was gruff and sleep deprived.

“Morning,” I echoed, stretching my free arm over my head. “It’s early.”

We were quiet, taking each other in, taking in the change that we’d ushered into our lives last night. 

“If you want to pretend that it didn’t happen, we can-”

“I don’t,” I shook my head. “That’s not what I want at all. Last night…Taylor,” I sighed, sitting up and running a hand through my hair. “It was the first time I’ve felt alive since…well.”

“Yeah,” he smiled a little. “Me too.”

“We don’t have to talk about it. We don’t have to make it a big thing. We can just figure out what we’re doing as we go.”

“Right,” he nodded. “I like that.”

“The one thing I do know…I hate not having you at the house. I got so used to you being there. I hope…well, I hope you’ll come back now that we’ve…” I trailed off and then I looked at him again. “Not every day, it doesn’t have to be every day, but I hope you’ll come back.”

“If thats what you want,” Taylor nodded, reaching up and tucking my hair behind my ear. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

“I want what you want too,” I smiled and he sat up, grabbing my face and kissing me softly.

“We don’t have to talk about it anymore,” he smiled, kissing me one more time. “We’ll just take it as it comes to us.”

And that’s what we did. 

Over the next six months Taylor and I grew closer and closer until I don’t think there was any closer we could possibly grow, except for one small, but huge thing. And that thing came exactly one year, one month and four days after we said goodbye to Zac.

We were laying in my bed, our heads tilted together on the pillow. I was reading a book and he was flipping through a magazine. I heard him toss the magazine to the side and then I could feel his eyes on me. He stared at me for a few minutes and then I finally grinned, closed my book and tossed it down onto the side of the bed and turned to him.

“Can I help you?”

“I can’t just look at you?”

“I mean, you can, but it’s weird.”

“Well then, I’m weird,” he shrugged, smiling. “Can I tell you something?”

“Anything.”

“I love you, Sidney.”

Something inside of my chest bent and cracked and my ears went a little fuzzy. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to love me. It wasn’t even that I didn’t love him. Both of those things were resounding positives, they were just ones that we hadn’t given a voice to and I had grown comfortable with that. The last person I shared those words with was gone and not only was he gone, but he was the brother of the man lying next to me. I wasn’t sure why my brain told me that as long as we didn’t say it it wasn’t a disrespect to Zac, but it had. But I knew hearing the words come out of his mouth that I had been wrong. He loved me and I loved him back and if I knew anything about Zac it was that he would have wanted me to find love again. He’d have been gutted if I had spent the rest of my life alone after he’d been gone.

“You don’t have to say it back,” Taylor said quietly, sliding his thumb gently over my cheek. “I just wanted you to know.”

“But what if I do too?” My voice came out more hesitant than I’d intended and my heart was beating wildly in my chest. I couldn’t say nothing and let him believe that I didn’t feel it too. It would be a crime for him to love me and think I didn’t love him back when in reality I loved him so much I was nearly shaking with it in the moment. “Can I say it then?”

His smile was quick and all encompassing, taking over his entire face. He nodded slowly and then opened his mouth to say something, but I spoke first.

“I love you, Taylor.”

His mouth was on mine and then his body was on my body and he kissed me like he was trying to kiss the truth of what we’d both just said into eternity. As if he kissed me hard enough and well enough the words would be etched in stone, never to be taken back, never to change. He pulled back and looked down at me, his face different suddenly, like there was something plaguing him.

“I know you still love him,” he said quietly, brushing my hair from my face. His hand stilled, resting on my cheek. “And that’s okay. You’re supposed to and you should. It doesn’t bother me and I don’t want you to think it does.” I nodded, thoughts of Zac filling my head. The last time I saw him playing like a movie, his hand raised, waving goodbye to me as he walked onto the plane that would be the thing that took him away from me forever. “I’d never make you choose. It’s not him or me, it’s both of us, and that’s fine. I never want you to feel guilty.”

I pulled his face down to mine and kissed him again. I was afraid if I spoke, if I put words to what I was feeling, I wouldn’t be able to. I would cry and crying would turn to sobbing and I wouldn’t be able to get anything out that I wanted to say to him, so I tried to convey my feelings through our lips moving together, my hands running over his body. I wanted him to know how much I needed him, how much I was already choosing him.

A little over a year ago I was so sure that I had found and was with the only person put on this planet that I was made to love. I was convinced that we each had a soulmate - only one - and I had been lucky enough to find mine. But, I knew then that it just wasn’t true. We weren’t capped out at one true love, we just didn’t know it until we were forced to let go of the first one we grabbed onto. Soulmates can take different shapes and fill different roles and I had spent my life learning to trust and being taught how to love by one of them and now I was being put back together by another. I loved them both, in different but equal and earth shattering ways, but it was time to seal my old love up in an envelope, tuck it into a drawer, take it out only occasionally when I needed to remember him. 

Taylor was here now and he was exactly who I needed and I was choosing him. From there on out, it was him and I.


	7. Chapter 7

**NOW**

Something is ringing.

Something is ringing and _it won’t stop_.

I open my eyes and everything is blurry. It comes back to me. I’m in my house in Tulsa and I spent hours laying in bed once Taylor fell asleep last night, awake and crying. 

My phone. It’s still ringing. I roll over in bed and move my hand around on my nightstand. I finally find it and I hold it over my face, I squint at the harsh light it’s giving off. It’s Zac.

I glance over at Taylor. He has his back to me. He’s probably still sleeping.

“Hello?” I press the phone to my ear and slide out of the bed and into the bathroom.

“Hearing your voice isn’t going to get old anytime soon.”

“Zac.”

“That’s me,” he says. I can’t help but smile. Hearing his voice isn’t getting old, either. How much I’ve missed him over the last almost four years rushes back to me. He’s back and he’s on the other side of the phone. “What’re you doing today?”

I take the phone from my face and look at it quickly.

“Zac, it’s six in the morning.”

“I couldn’t wait anymore,” he says. “I spent a lot of time sleeping when I was away. Plus, I miss you. Wanna go out for breakfast?”

I consider saying no, making an excuse, but I realize that I _do_ want to go out for breakfast. I want to see him. I want to talk to him. Most of all I want to find out where he’s been, what happened to keep him away from us for four years. 

“Alright,” I say. “Give me half an hour to wake up and get ready.”

“Sweet,” his voice is light and happy, not at all indicative of the fact that he’s recently risen from the dead and is suddenly back in my life. “Can you pick me up at my parents? I, uh, I don’t actually have a license right now.”

“Yeah, I suppose they become invalid when you’re declared dead,” I say and then I close my eyes, pinch the bridge of my nose. I shouldn’t have said that.

But he laughs. He laughs longer than the situation calls for and then he breaths into the phone. “That’s why I love you.”

I keep my eyes closed. I don’t say anything at all. I want to, but I can’t. 

“See you soon?” He asks. I nod and then remember that he can’t see me. I open my eyes and look in the mirror.

“Yeah, I’ll call you when I’m there.”

“Awesome, see you Sid.”

And then he hangs up. I drop the phone on the counter and turn the water on. I wash my face, brush my teeth, arrange my hair into a messy bun on the top of my head. I think about putting makeup on but I want to be low key. I don’t know why, there is no reason for me to go out of my way to look casual, but that’s what I do. 

When I’m finished, I take one more look at myself and then sigh. I’m so nervous. To see Zac. What a farce.

I open the door and Taylor is sitting up in bed, his head resting against the headboard. He looks at me and tilts his head. “You’re up early.”

“Zac called,” I can’t meet his eyes. “We’re going to go for breakfast.”

“Just the two of you?” His voice isn’t accusing but there is a tinge of jealousy laced in it. Jealousy that Zac will have me to himself for a couple of hours or jealousy because his brother didn’t ask him to breakfast, I’m not sure. I don’t think I want to be. I look over at him and I nod.

“Is that okay?”

“Of course,” he says. This time he looks away. Down at his lap. He shakes his head just slightly, I’m not sure I was meant to notice. I sigh and walk over to the bed and sit down next to him.

“This is hard.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll stay home…if you want me to.”

“No,” he looks back up at me. “You should go. You have to figure out…” he trails off and looks back down at his lap. My heart is twisting inside of my chest, a feeling I’m starting to unfortunately get used to. I hate this feeling.

“What, Tay?”

“You have to figure out if you still…if there is still…” he sighs and brings a hand up to his face. He rubs it as if he’s trying to rub away his confusion. “You should go, Sidney.”

“Okay,” I say quietly.

“Okay,” he repeats. It’s awkward and stilted and this isn’t us. This isn’t me. I feel like I’ve been walking around in my body but I’m someone else. Hate. I hate everything about this.

“Taylor,” I say quietly. He looks back up at me and I lean in and kiss him softly. I pull back and I grab his hand, squeezing it lightly. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

He nods but he doesn’t say anything else and I hate myself for this pull I’m feeling inside of me. My fiancé. My husband. You’re not supposed to have both, it’s unnatural. It’s a nightmare.

\- - -

Zac is sitting across from me. There are coffee mugs and plates in between us. Suddenly he drinks coffee. He never did before. I wonder what else has changed about him. I haven’t thought about it but I’m sure if we ran down a list, tons of things have changed about me since…well, since before.

We haven’t said much. Small talk about nothing at all, really. He keeps smiling at me like I’m the best thing he’s ever laid eyes on and every time he does it my chest does that thing again. I’m getting really tired of it doing that thing.

“So New York City, huh?” He smiles, a piece of bacon in his hand. I guess that hasn’t changed.

“Yeah,” I nod. “I needed a change. You don’t get much different from here than the city.”

“I guess that’s true,” he shrugs a shoulder. “Do you like it there?”

“I love it.”

“What do you do there?”

“I opened a record store,” I smile a little. “Houston Records, just like here. They’re technically sister stores.”

“Does Taylor work there with you?”

My eyes dart up to his. I didn’t know he knew Taylor was in New York with me. I assumed he just assumed that Taylor was still right here in Tulsa where he was before. I slowly shake my head.

“No,” I pick a piece of bacon up myself. Mostly just to distract myself, have something to do with my hands. “Taylor works for a record label.”

“Really?” One of his eyebrows shoots up. He’s surprised, but I don’t know why. “Doing what?”

“He’s mostly a studio musician. He lays down the piano parts for other artists and bands.”

“Wow,” he nods. He shoves the rest of the piece of bacon into his mouth. “Good for him.” He grabs another piece of bacon. I think to stop him, concerned about the amount of fat he’s consuming in one meal, but then I’m reminded about how much weight he’s lost. It’s hard to see it because when I look at him I just see _Zac_. I just see the guy who I stood across from and exchanged vows with. The person I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with. I don’t see the baggy t-shirt or the pants that are just a little too loose. I don’t see the collarbone that sticks just slightly out. I don’t even notice that his cheeks are a little gaunt or the dark circles underneath his eyes. But now I do. Now that’s all I can see. 

I push the platter of bacon closer to him as if telling him silently that it’s all his now. 

“And do you guys live in a nice apartment? Is it one bedroom or two?”

My head snaps up. I can feel my mouth fall slightly open and my cheeks are heating up. 

“How-”

“I’m not an idiot, Sid,” he shrugs. “It took all of an hour of being around the two of you for me to figure it out. I know the way you look at him…because it’s the way you used to look at me.”

“Zac, I-”

He holds up a hand and shakes his head. 

“I don’t really want to hear anything about it, Sid. I just wanted you to know that I know you’re with him. Despite everyone apparently agreeing to keep it from me, I know. And I want you to know,” he leans his elbows on the table, the rest of his body leaning forward. “That I’m going to do everything in my power to get you back.”

\- - -

We’re sitting in the car in Walker and Diana’s driveway. Zac is drumming on his thighs to the music coming out of the radio. So much about him is exactly the same, but so much is different and I feel like an outsider in this space with him. I want it to feel how it always did, and sometimes it does, but right now when I don’t know what to say to him, when I know that I’ve hurt him, it doesn’t feel like us and I don’t know what to do about it.

“Thanks for going to breakfast with me,” he breaks the silence. He stops drumming and turns to me, his entire body rotating in my direction.

“Of course,” I smile. “It was nice.”

“I guess I better get inside. Mom is probably having a conniption. It’s like if she doesn’t see me for more than forty-five minutes she’s waiting for the call that I’m dead again.” He grins and my chest tightens. He talks about it with such frivolity and it stings me. I thought he was dead for the last four years and my heart, mind and soul had died for a little while along with him, and he seems to think it’s just a clever punchline for a joke. “I swear she comes into my room in the middle of the night with a mirror to check if I’m breathing, I-”

“Zac,” I sigh. I look up at him and he’s frowning.

“Sorry. I have to deal somehow, you know, you know how I am.”

“Yeah,” I nod. 

“Look, Sid,” he puts an elbow on the center console and he’s closer to me now. I can smell his shampoo and his soap, the smells mixing in my nose, trademarking themselves as his new scent. “I know it must have been awful for you. It must have been really hard and I hate that I caused that for you. But, I meant what I said, Sidney…I’m not going to just give you up because I was gone and you found a way to move on. I’m here now, and I’m going to fight to get you back. Starting right now.”

He leans forward and it’s like everything is in slow motion again. He’s getting closer and my eyes fall shut all on their own. His lips touch mine and I draw in a sharp breath. They’re warm and chapped, just like they have always been. Four years may have gone by since the last time we were in this position, but it feels exactly the same, just how it always had. My mouth remembers him and it moves with his the way it has hundreds of times in years before.

His hand slides against my face, his palm on my cheek, his fingers wrapped around the back of my neck. _Home_ my brain is screaming at me. _This feels like home_.

And then he’s pulling away and I’m instinctively leaning forward. I want more of him. I want to bottle the feeling he just gave me and pull it out and drink some when I need to. 

And then I remember. Taylor is back at the house waiting on me. Taylor, my fiancé. The man I’ve spent the past almost four years with, the man who loves and trusts me, and my face grows hot for a whole different reason. My hand reaches up and my fingertips graze my lips and before I can even right myself, make it so I can respond, so I can say anything, he’s saying goodbye, he’s squeezing my shoulder and he’s letting himself out of the car. 

I watch him walk up the pathway and into the house. The door shuts behind him and he’s gone. I lean back in my seat and cover my face with my hands. This is too much, everything is too much. I want to run into the house after him and get as far away from him as I can all at the same time and it’s the most confusing mix of emotions I’ve ever felt in my entire life. 

_I’m going to do everything in my power to get you back._ It plays over and over in my head until my eyes are burning and the first tears fall and before I know it I’m sobbing, harsh, quick, violent sobs, my breath getting caught in my throat. 

He used to be the only man I had ever loved and the only thing I had ever wanted and then he was gone and now there is more to me than him. I don’t know how to make anything make sense to me, I don’t even know where to start. So instead of trying, I wipe at my eyes, I calm my breathing and I put the car in reverse and pull away. I can’t fix this, I can’t even try.

\- - -

My key gets stuck in the lock. I curse under my breath and try to wiggle it out but it wont budge. I slam my palm on the door and drop my forehead onto it’s surface. We really need to change that lock.

The door opens and my head and hand fall forward. It shocks me and I jump, I look up at Taylor. 

“My key got stuck,” I say lamely, shrugging my shoulders. He nods and yanks the key out of the doorknob and turns around. He throws the keys down on the coffee table and moves towards the bedroom. I drop my purse and follow him in there. I stop in my tracks the second I take in the scene in front of me.

His suitcase is open on the bed and most of the things we had just unpacked are shoved back inside of it. Nothing is folded correctly, that’s always the sign that Taylor has packed his own bag instead of me doing it for him. Shirts are balled up, chargers are thrown in haphazardly. I shake my head and look up at him, he has his back to me and he’s pulling his socks out of the top drawer of the dresser.

“What are you doing?” I ask quietly, though I know what he’s doing, the evidence is in his luggage. 

“I’m going back to New York,” he doesn’t look at me as he crosses the room and throws the handful of socks into the suitcase. 

“What?”

“I can’t do this, Sid,” he shakes his head and goes back to the dresser, pulling more things out of it. 

“You can’t leave me here,” I’m shaking my head. I’m walking towards him. I reach to touch his arm but I stop when his body stiffens. He doesn’t want me to touch him. “Taylor,” my voice breaks. I try the best I can not to cry again. I don’t want to cry anymore. 

“Sidney,” he sighs and turns to me. He puts his hands on both of my elbows, his fingers going around my arms. “I can not stay here and wait for you to fall back in love with him. I have to go home.”

Home. Home is in New York. In our one bedroom apartment with the high ceilings and the too small bathrooms. This house is mine but it isn’t home anymore, I know that inside. 

“You can come with me, if you want to,” his eyes are red and I just realize that he’d been crying too. My heart hurts again and my eyes fall shut for a second. I can feel a couple of tears fall, they hit my cheeks and he sighs again, letting go of my arms. He rubs his thumbs over my cheeks, erasing the tears from my face. “But I think you should stay here.”

“Are you-” my head is shaking again, faster this time. I can’t believe this is happening. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“No,” he shakes his head. He sighs and rubs at his face. “Of course I’m not. I just need to get out of here. You need to figure out what you…” he sighs again and looks down at me. His face is so sad. I want to beg him not to go but I can tell it wouldn’t do any good. When Taylor has his mind made up about something there isn’t any changing it. “I said I’d never make you choose,” his voice is quiet and he’s not quite looking at me. His eyes are somewhere between my nose and my mouth. “I remember…I remember telling you that, but, Sidney,” he shakes his head and then his eyes meet mine. “You _have_ to choose. But I can’t sit here and watch you do it. I’m going to go home and you can stay here and you can figure out exactly what it is you want. If it’s him, then I’ll let you go. He’s back now and you might realize that…that he’s still…” his eyes are full of tears and they start falling. I feel my shoulders vibrating. We’re crying and he’s telling me he’s leaving and I want to stop him. I want to, but I can’t. Because I know he’s right. I do need to figure it out. I need to make sure I’m making the right decision. I’m almost sure that Taylor is where I want to be, but only almost. And almost isn’t enough.

He shakes his head again and he moves away from me. He zips the suitcase and pulls it off the bed. He pops the handle and wraps his fingers around it and he pulls it towards me. He stops and puts a hand on my cheek.

“I love you and I hope you choose me, but even if you don’t, I’ll still love you. I hope you figure everything out and you come back to me.”

He kisses my cheek and he walks out of the room. I hear the front door shut and I sink down onto the end of the bed. I never thought I’d be here, but I’m here now and I don’t know how to find my way out of it.

My phone pings from my pocket and I pull it out. It’s Zac, a text. I slide it open and make a face as I read his text. There’s a link attached. 

_I guess the cats out of the bag._

I click the link and my heart starts racing as my eyes scan over the short article. 

_Sources tell us that Zac Hanson, drummer of disbanded pop-rock band HANSON, presumed dead after a plane crash nearly four years ago has returned home to his wife and family. Details on his reappearance are non-existent at the moment. We’ll update as more information comes out._

My eyes run over the article a few more times. Three sentences. That’s what Zac’s presence amongst the living warranted. I shut the phone screen and drop back on the bed, flinging an arm over my face. I have a feeling things are about to get complicated.


	8. Chapter 8

**BEFORE**

Being with Taylor was easy. There was no awkward getting to know each other buffer because we already knew one another. There was no skepticism about each others pasts, because we already knew those too. The only surprise between Taylor Hanson and myself was that we fell in love and that continued to surprise me every single day.

Without us ever really talking about it, Taylor slowly started moving his things into my house. It felt natural and organic and I could have done something, anything, to stop it, but I didn’t. I liked having him around and in all honesty, I hated when he was gone. So a year and a half after Zac left us, I found his old things replaced with Taylor’s. All of the places in the house that I used to see the ghost of Zac in every time I looked were filled up with Taylor then, almost all of my sadness slowly transformed into happiness. 

I never thought I would be truly happy again, but I found as the days went on that I was getting there. Time quickly passed, days turning into weeks turning into months and without even realizing it a year had passed us by. 

Zac had been gone for a little over two years and Taylor and I had been together officially for just around one. I had been noticing for the few months before that Taylor seemed to be a little bit lost. The only job he had ever known had been taken from him when his brother was and it was obvious to everyone that knew him that Taylor was lost without creating music. We had talked about him perusing a solo career but the reality of playing on stage without Zac was something he didn’t want to see. He had been searching for something to fill the creative gap in his life and I had been playing the role of supportive girlfriend without truly knowing how to help him. I would have done anything to make it easier on him, to find a solution, but in the end I didn’t have to, because one was found for him.

I had just closed up the store and was driving home, trying to call Taylor to see if he wanted me to pick up some food on the way, but he wasn’t answering. Taylor never didn’t answer, so the closer and closer I got to home the more nervous I was growing. Taylor’s car was in the driveway when I pulled in and I let out an actual sigh of relief. 

When I walked into the house he was sitting on the couch with his laptop pulled onto his lap. He looked up at me and smiled.

“Sid. Sit down, I have something I want to talk to you about.”

“I’ve been trying to call you,” I shook my head, dropping my purse and keys on the table before sitting down on the couch.

“Oh, I must not have heard the phone,” he waved a hand in front of him. “Listen, you know how I’ve been needing something…you know, to do with my time. Something to work on?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. I felt a tiny bloom of hope in my chest that he had finally figured it out.

“Well,” he smiled again, this time wider. “Jim called me this afternoon right after you left for the store. You probably don’t remember Jim. He was one of the A & R guys who worked with us on our last record. Anyway, he called and he’s working for this great start up label. He offered me a job.”

“Tay, that’s great!” I literally felt happiness start seeping through my body like a tsunami. All I wanted was for Taylor to find his way back to feeling fulfilled and it looked like it was finally happening. “What’s the job?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” for just a moment the giant smile slipped from his face, but it was back quickly. “It’s a studio musician gig. I’d basically be laying down the music for acts who don’t have a full-time band behind them. Some of the greatest musicians out there are actually studio-”

“Right, right,” I laughed. “I get what that means. That’s great!”

“There is one thing.”

“Okay,” I nodded.

“The job is in New York.”

I felt all of the happiness that had been consuming me for the past five minutes flicker. Was Taylor telling me that he was going to move halfway across the country? Was he really going to leave me behind to play music on other peoples albums? I couldn’t ask him not to, I wasn’t sure that I had the right.

“Sid, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I shook my head. “Nothing at all, I’m happy for you, Taylor. Really.”

“You don’t look happy.”

I dropped my head into my hands and shook my head again. I knew I was being selfish, but I’d already lost one Hanson and I wasn’t prepared to do it again. I didn’t want to be without him. It was in that moment that I realized how truly dependent on Taylor I had become and I wasn’t sure I liked the feeling. 

“I don’t want you to leave me,” I said quietly, flinching at my own words. 

“Leave you?” His voice was confused. “Sidney, look at me.”

I dropped my hands and moved my eyes up to look at him. He was half smiling and the act confused me even more. How could he be happy when he was telling me he was about to relocate himself hundreds of miles away from me.

“Sidney, I want you to come with me. Look,” He turned his laptop around so the screen was facing me. “I already found us a place. I emailed the landlord and he already got back to me. It’s ours if we want it.”

I looked at the picture in front of me. It was a kitchen, white cabinets and stainless steel appliances, high ceilings. I loved it on sight.

“So, what do you say?” He turned the laptop back around and put it down on the coffee table. “Do you want to move to New York with me?”

\- - -

Four weeks later I worked my last shift at the record store. My parents and Jenny had cake and cocktails in the backroom after the doors were locked and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I shed a few tears.

We had decided that Taylor would finally sell his house that he hadn’t been living in anyway and we would keep mine, so we packed our clothes and a handful of other things we didn’t want to be without and we had them shipped to our new address in Manhattan. 

I had worried about money, spinning around and around in my head that I was never going to be able to afford the astronomical price of New York real estate, but Taylor had assured me that I had nothing to worry about.

“I don’t think you understand how much money I still have…from before,” he had shrugged. “I don’t spend anything, really. I never have. And I’ll be working. We’re good, Sid, really.”

He was right, I didn’t understand. We’d never talked about money. I was sure he did have plenty to go around, it was no secret that all three Hanson brothers had continued to live modestly even after unfathomable fame and the money that had come along with that. I, however, didn’t have the luxury of a platinum album or any of the things that followed it to fund my life, and I was uncomfortable allowing Taylor to foot the bill for me to live. He spoke again as if reading my mind.

“We’ll find something for you there. It’s New York, there are unending possibilities.”

We looked at each other, his face hopeful and happy and the longer I looked at him the more I thought that this crazy idea could work. 

Not only did Taylor need to get out of Oklahoma in order to find something that fed his need to create, I’d been pushing down the fact that I needed to get out of Oklahoma too. I needed to put distance and time in between me and my old life there, I needed to learn who I was away from the place that I had spent my life with Zac by my side, and I needed to do it with Taylor. 

“So,” he smiled at me. “Do you want to move to New York with me?”

“Yes.”

I surprised myself with how fast the word fell out of my mouth. I was more surprised with just how much I suddenly _meant_ it. There was nothing else I wanted right then. A new life with the man I was in love with sounded like everything I’d been needing.

\- - -

We were in New York for three months and everything was going perfectly. Taylor was fitting right in at the label. He’d already contributed to two albums and they were now toying around with the idea of him actually writing music to be paired with lyrics that would then be recorded by other bands and artists. He was in his glory and every day when he came home from work I knew more and more that we had made the right decision.

The only thing that wasn’t perfect was my lack of purpose. I felt like I was just there, in this fancy apartment that Taylor had paid a years worth of rent for up front, doing nothing but existing. I was happy in my relationship and I was happy with my location, but I was deeply unhappy with the fact that I’d yet to find work with reasonable hours and pay. I tried as hard as I could to keep how I was feeling from Taylor, I knew it was just a temporary problem that I would eventually find a solution to, but he knew me, so of course he knew. 

It was a rare Saturday when Taylor had the whole day off so I was surprised that when he finally did he woke me up by bouncing up and down on the bed at seven-thirty in the morning.I groaned and swatted at him, nearly begging him to stop, but he carried on.

“You gotta get up, Sid. I have a surprise for you, let’s go!”

“Taylor it’s so early,” I groaned. “Can’t you give me this surprise at a reasonable hour?”

“I want to get over there before the traffic gets too bad, come on, Sidney,” he laughed, pulling on my hands. “Get out of bed!”

I sighed, pulling myself up and making my way to the bathroom, muttering a few lighthearted insults at Taylor on my way by. I could hear him laughing and ruffling around while I brushed my teeth and arranged my hair into a somewhat suitable fashion. When I came back into the bedroom he had an entire outfit laid out for me on the bed. I turned to and lifted an eyebrow.

“Are you dabbling in being a stylist now too?”

“No,” he laughed, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. “I’m just really excited. Come on, get dressed.”

He practically skipped out of the room and I shook my head, laughing to myself. I got dressed and put on some shoes and when I left the bedroom he was waiting by the door, his hand wrapped around the knob, fingers tapping on it impatiently.

“Finally,” he breathed. “Come on, there’s a cab waiting.”

“Where are we _going_?” I asked, following him to the elevator.

“You’ll see,” he smiled, turning to me once the elevator doors were shut. He wrapped his arms around my waist and kissed me, only stopping when we heard the ding that we’d arrived on the ground floor. “You’re going to really fall in love with me after this.”

“Oh really?” I laughed, following him out the doors and onto the sidewalk. “Only now?”

He pulled the backdoor of the cab open and ushered me in, sliding in next to me. “Well, it’ll be totally locked in for sure after this.”

“Okay,” Taylor turned to me once the cab stopped at the curb on a street that I didn’t recognize. It was only a few blocks from the apartment and I was wondering why we hadn’t just walked, but I didn’t ask. “This is going to sound weird, but you’re going to have to just go with it.”

I lifted an eyebrow at him for the second time that morning and then the other joined it when he pulled his scarf from around his neck.

“You have to wear this until we get inside.”

“What the hell are-”

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course I trust you.”

“Okay then,” he smiled and leaned in, wrapping the scarf around my eyes. He tied it in the back and then laid a kiss on my lips. I heard the cab door open and he grabbed my hand, leading me out onto the sidewalk.

“Taylor, seriously, what is going on?”

“You’ll see,” he responded, keeping his fingers locked with mine. 

“Not with this thing on my face.”

“Come on,” he laughed. “Just walk straight, I got you.”

I could hear him pull a door open and then he lead me inside. “Just a few more feet,” he said, both of his hands holding mine now. “Come on, almost there.” He let go of my hands and moved around me so he was standing behind me. His hands landed on my elbows and he leaned his chin on my shoulder. “You ready?” I nodded and his hands moved and I could tell he was untying the scarf. “Okay, here it is.”

He removed the scarf and a roar of “SURPRISE!” Rolled through the room. Both of our parents were there, and my sister and Rich were there. My eyes moved and I saw Isaac and his wife, her hand resting on her nearly pregnant belly. What was going on? Did I forget it was my birthday.

“Taylor, what-”

“I bought this,” he moved back to in front of me, his hands back on my elbows. “It went on the market a week after we moved here, I’ve been in negotiations since. It’s yours, Sid.”

“Mine?” I looked around the room and noticed exactly what was happening in front of me. There were empty merchandise racks placed throughout the room, stacks of vinyl records and CD’s sitting on them waiting to be arranged neatly. There was a counter with a cash register, a sign hanging above it. Houston Records. “Oh my God,” I breathed, looking back at Taylor. “You bought me a record store?”

He smiled and nodded. “Technically it’s ours, but it’s yours. My name is just on the paperwork. What do you think?”

I looked around again, taking everything in again and then I looked back at Taylor. “I love it.”

It hadn’t been all that long ago that I was sure that my life was completely over but suddenly I had everything I had ever wanted literally in front of me. I was on cloud nine, completely and totally convinced that nothing could touch me. I guess that’s why they say hindsight is 20/20.


	9. Chapter 9

**NOW**

I must have fallen asleep on the couch last night because I open my eyes and I’m very much in my living room and not my bedroom. I look over at the TV and the story of Zac being alive is still flashing on the ticker at the bottom. I groan and push myself into a sitting position, turning the volume up to see if they’re talking about it too.

They’re not. Something about the Kardashians instead. I shut the TV off and sit back against the couch and yawn, all of the events of yesterday popping back up in my mind. Not only is the word out about Zac but Taylor is gone, back in New York where I should probably be with him, but I’m here in Tulsa instead, trying to figure out what to do about my not-dead husband. I’m not sure what has happened to my life but I almost find myself hoping that this is all some big, elaborate dream. 

I know it isn’t. In all truthfulness, I’m not even sure that’s what I really want. Having Zac back has been…I’m having trouble putting a word on it. I knew before Zac had shown back up that I’d never stopped loving him. How could I? He was laced into everything that I am for so long he was just like another part of me. So it was no surprise to me that I was feeling a pull towards him, and it was also no surprise that I had no idea what to do with that information. I love Taylor and I don’t want to hurt him. The thought of hurting him stings way deep down in my core, but I’m not sure I can go on with our life together unless I know that my life with Zac truly is over. Now that he’s back could it really _be_ over? I feel like I have control over exactly nothing right now. 

The doorbell rings and I jump slightly. Not only am I not expecting anyone but I’m also not in the _mood_ for anyone. I sigh and stand up. I walk to the door and unlock it and pull it open.

“Morning,” Zac is standing there with a coffee in one hand, a Mountain Dew in the other. “I hope this is still how you take your coffee.”

“Thanks,” I take it from him and take a sip. It’s perfect. “Come in.”

It feels weird, inviting him into what was once his own home. He follows me in and closes the door behind him. “Wow, it looks nearly the same.”

“Yeah, haven’t changed much,” I feel so out of place in my own home all of a sudden, but at the same time I realize that I’m calmed by his presence. I realize that I’ve been wanting to see him since I left him the day before and I can’t figure out why it took me seeing him now to come to that. I walk into the kitchen and sit down at the table, he follows my lead and sits across from me.

“Where’s Tay?”

“He, uh-” I look away from him. Talking about Taylor is truly awkward. “He went back to New York. Last night.”

“Oh,” there is a flash of hurt across his face but he shakes it off quickly. “Did he have to get back to work?”

I consider lying. It would be easy to just say that Taylor had to get back to the studio and he’d be back sooner or later, but I have a lifelong tradition of not lying to Zac and I don’t want to start. I don’t want everything about the two of us to be different now. It seems almost impossible for that to be a reality but I know now that it’s what I’m striving for. It has to be.

“No,” I frown. “He…well,” I sigh. “He wanted to leave so I could figure out- so we could-”

“Just say it, Sid.”

“He wants me to figure out if I still want to be with you and he doesn’t want to hang around while I do it,” I say quickly, looking down at the table. He’s quiet for a second then his fingers start tapping out a light beat on the wood.

“And do you?”

“I don’t know,” I say at the same low volume. It’s the truth. I don’t have anything else for him.

“Well I guess we have an assignment,” he says and I can hear the smile in his voice. I look up and sure enough, that smile I know so well is radiating back at me. His fingers are still tapping out a beat on the table and I swear I know it but I don’t want to ask. “For the record, I still want to be with you.”

I nod. I feel so many things all at one it’s hard to describe what I’m _actually_ feeling. Hearing him say he wants to be with me makes my stomach flutter like I’m that same teenage girl I was when we started. The knowledge that I’m not makes my chest constrict.

“I really just came over to deliver you some caffeine,” he pushes his chair back and stands, I mirror his movements. “But I’d like to take you out tonight. Anywhere, your pick.”

“Are we ever going to talk about it?” I say before I can stop myself.

“Talk about what, Sid?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Zac,” I raise my hands and then let them fall back to my sides. “Maybe the fact that you’ve been _dead_ for the past four years and now you’re standing in my kitchen.”

He sighs and looks at the floor for a second and then looks back up at me. “We will. I promise you that we will. I just…I don’t want to do it right now, okay? I just want to appreciate being here…with you. Just for a little while.”

I nod. It’s his story to tell. Despite the fact that I feel he owes me answers I don’t want to push him. It’s only the third day after all. I can’t help but feel disappointed that one of his priorities isn’t making me understand how and why he was taken away from me, but I decide that I need to respect his wishes whether I really understand them or not.

“Okay.”

“So, tonight? Pick me up at my parents? Say, seven?”

“Sure,” I nod. “Seven sounds fine.”

“Awesome,” he smiles. He looks at me like he’s considering coming to me but he just smiles again and nods before he turns and walks out of the kitchen. I hear the front door shut behind him and I sink back down into my chair. I look at my cellphone sitting on the table and know what I need to do.

“Hey,” Taylor’s voice comes over the phone. He sounds tired.

“Hey,” I echo. I can picture him, the way he always looks when he’s lacking sleep. Cheeks a little ruddy, eyes a little swollen. His hair is probably dirty and he’s probably running a hand through it right now.

We’re quiet for a few beats too long and I start to ache inside. I hate this gap that is grown in between us and all I want is to find a way to fill it in. Even if I realize that I want or need to be with Zac, even if that’s almost what my heart has been telling me since he walked out of the kitchen, I need Taylor and I feel guilty and selfish. I know it’s not my fault that we’re in this situation, but I can’t help but feel like it is. My shoulders are heavy with the weight of it all and there is nothing I can do.

“What’s up, Sidney?” He finally breaks the quiet and I breathe out. 

“I miss you,” I say quietly into the phone. I’m laying on my back on my bed - our bed - and it hurts that he isn’t there with me.

“Me too,” he says. “How are things? I saw the news. Is he alright?”

“He seems it,” I say. “He dropped by a little while ago and he didn’t even mention it.”

“Oh,” he says and I can hear the questions he’s not asking in his voice.

“He just brought me a coffee,” I say. “He was here for ten minutes.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me, Sid.”

“Don’t I?” We’re quiet again. The quiet is too loud and my head is throbbing. I need him to tell me what to do, how to navigate through all of this. “Taylor what does this mean?”

“What?” I can hear him shifting and I wonder if he’s laying in our bed in New York also mourning the emptiness of the space beside him.

“What am I supposed to do?” I ask. “This…this whole figuring things out thing. How am I supposed to do that?”

“I guess you have to do it as if I’m not here holding you back,” his voice is sad and I can tell he’s trying not to show it.

“How do I do that?”

“Just…do what you have to do, Sidney. I guess…I guess we have to call this a break. Take the next few days to figure out what is still there between you and Zac without me…as if we’re not-”

“Together?” My throat is tight and my chest hurts again. I wonder if emotional pain can bring on a physical heart attack and if it can I’m sure I’m in danger. 

“Yeah,” he’s quiet and it’s killing me because I miss him so damn much. He’s my best friend and I don’t now how to deal with hard things without him. “You need to know for sure and the only way you’re going to do that is to do it on your own without thinking of me. If you don’t do this…and we carry on and get married-” his voice breaks a little and I frown, putting a hand over my face. “I’m afraid you might grow to resent me someday. You might realize that you don’t have closure…that you ever really figured things out. This isn’t some ex-boyfriend that you broke up with, Sid. This is your husband who was taken from you without choice. We- _I_ need to know that you’re not going to wake up in five years and wish you had given it a shot.”

What he’s saying makes all the sense in the world but it doesn’t stop me from feeling the pain that each and every single word that he says brings me. 

“Take your time, Sidney. Take a week and then call me. Let’s just…let’s just let you figure this one out without me hanging over your shoulder.”

I’m quiet not because I don’t have anything to say but because I’m afraid if I try to say anything at all I wont be able to get the words out around the sobs I can feel bubbling up in my chest. 

“I’m gonna let you go now,” he says quietly. “I have to get to the studio, bit client coming in today.” I want to ask about it, I want to hear hi excitedly tell me all about the project he was working on like he always did, but I could tell he didn’t want to. “Let’s talk in a week and we’ll go from there.”

“Okay,” I say. I want to say a thousand other things but I know he’s right. Deep down inside I just _know_ that everything he’s said, every reason he’s given me is one hundred percent accurate and I really do need this. I’m _not_ sure if I want to run back to Zac. There are moments when I consider getting in my car and doing jus that. But there are just as many moments where I’m sure that I’ll be returning to New York, to my high-ceilinged apartment and my record shop and my fiancé who I love. I have never been so confused in my life. 

“I love you, Sid,” he says and then he hangs up before I can respond. 

“I love you too,” I say, dropping my phone beside me in the bed. Love shouldn’t be this hard.

\- - -

I’m sitting in my car in Walker and Diana’s driveway and I know I should go inside, but I can’t bring myself to get out. Diana, who has always been a second mother to me, is now someone who I’m avoiding and I hate myself for it. I feel like no matter which way I go with my eventual decision I’ll be letting her down. They’re both her sons and she loves them both and while I know she loves me I’m afraid she wont be able to forgive me for hurting either one of them. I wonder if I’ll be able to forgive myself.

A tap on my window startles me and I look to my left and see Isaac standing at the side of my car. I roll my window down and give him a half-hearted smile.

“Hey Sidney,” he smiles. 

“Hey Isaac.”

“How are you holding up?”

“As well as you’d expect, I guess,” I shrug a shoulder and lean back in my seat. “How is he doing…you know, from what you can see?”

“He seems alright,” Isaac looks towards the house and then back at me. “But we did just get some news.” He sighs and shakes his head as if he’s been dealing with some sort of exasperation for hours. “There are fans in town. One of my buddies who works downtown saw them milling about the studio. It’s only a matter of time until they start congregating outside of our houses, I’m sure. Mom is worried that Zac will become overwhelmed if he has to deal with that on top of everything else. She’s trying to convince him to go stay at the lake house for a while until this all dies down but he’s insistent that he wont go without you.”

“Shit,” I breathe out. 

“They’re in there arguing,” he looks back at the house. “Neither of them will back down.”

“Well,” I say, shutting the car off and putting my hand on the handle, waiting for Isaac to back up so I can get out. Once he does I do. “I guess I know what I have to do then.”

Isaac says nothing but follows me up the path and to the door. I open it and walk in, following Diana’s voice to the kitchen where her and Zac are standing on opposite sides of the island, each with their arms crossed over their chests.

“I’ll go with you,” I say, startling them both. They each look over at me and Zac’s eyebrows shoot high on his forehead.

“What?”

“To the lake house. I’ll go with you. I’ve got plenty of gas in the tank and nothing to do for the next few days. It’s better than you…having to deal with anything that seems unnecessary.”

Diana is nodding and crossing the room. She puts her arms around me and hugs me tight. She’s saying something about how worried she’d been but I can’t listen, all I can do is stare over her shoulder at Zac. He’s smiling at me in that way that always got my heart going in our past life, the same smile that could always take me out at the knees. I’m not surprised that it’s having the same effect on me now.

\- - -

We’re sitting on the threadbare couch in the lake house. It’s late now and we have take out containers spread between us on the cushions, glasses of wine sitting on the wooden coffee table. We only arrived about twenty minutes ago and it’s raining outside and cold in the house. The heat is taking forever to kick on but we’re busying ourselves with our food and small talk. It becomes clear that we’re both done eating but we’re both also moving food around on our plates to delay not having something in between us to soften the elephant in the room. Zac finally laughs softly and stands up, grabbing some of the empty containers as he does.

“I’m gonna clean up,” he says, piling them inside of each other. I stand and grab the plates, putting one on top of the other, but he takes them out of my hand and shakes his head. “I got it. Just sit down, relax.”

I watch him leave the room, the word relax jumping around inside of my head. Relax. I feel like my body hasn’t relaxed since he called me that first day. I feel like I’m being pulled taut by all of the feelings rushing around inside me and the scariest part is that I’m getting used to the feeling.

“Look what I found hanging on the fridge,” he walks back into the room and he’s smiling. He’s holding something in his hand, his eyes trained on it. He sits back down next to me on the couch and hands it to me and it takes all of two seconds for the entire scene in front of me is playing out in my head like a movie, like it had just happened yesterday.

It’s a picture of us on the day we got married at this very lake house. We’re looking at each other and we’re both laughing. My head is thrown back a little, my mouth open wide. His arm is around my waist and my hand is pressed against his chest. 

“We were so happy,” he says and I nod still looking down at the picture. We really were. The happiest I have ever been was always with Zac. Sure, I’m happy now, I’ve been happy for a long time, but nothing really ever touches that swollen bubble of joy we had lived in for years. I wasn’t sure anything ever could. “There are a few more in there, but this is my favorite.”

My eyes move back up to his and he’s still smiling at me. Our wedding day washes over me like a tsunami of memories. My just slightly off-white dress that made me feel like a princess, the flowers I wore in my hair. Him in a tailored tux, a lavender colored bow tie around his neck. It was truly the day all little girls dream of when they think about their wedding. I want to go back, to feel the way I felt standing across from him that day again. I know that I can’t, but we’re here now and maybe that’s good enough.

“We were,” I hand the picture back to him and he leans forward and drops it onto the table. He picks up both of my hands. His skin is soft and not calloused the way it always was before. I guess that’s what happens when you aren’t perpetually holding drum sticks for four years. 

“We could be happy like that again,” he looks hopeful. He knows me and I know that he can see inside of me. He can tell that I’m opening up to the idea of us, that I’m letting the floodgates inside of me that were holding back the rush of _us_ and our past together open up. I know that he can see it in my eyes, in the way my hands are shaking a little bit. 

“Zac,” I whisper. My voice is shaky on his one syllable name. “Tell me what happened to you.”

His eyes close and they stay that way for a couple of beats and then he opens them again and his eyebrows are drawn together. He squeezes my hands. “Tomorrow,” he says. “Please. Can we just…” he shakes his head for a second. “Can we just be here together for tonight?”

I think about it for a second and then I nod. I want that. I want to be there with him, completely present in these moments that we are sharing together. If he isn’t ready then I won’t push him, I can wait for him to get there. I’ve waited this long, what’s a little while longer? 

“Thank you,” he smiles. He reaches for me and I think about pulling away, but I let him pull me into him. He’s turned so he’s leaning against the arm of the couch and my body fits right in between his legs. My head rests on his chest and my legs curl up in between his own. His fingertips run up and down my arm, his other hand slides into my hair. “I missed you so much.” He whispers and I can feel myself getting choked up. I missed him too, more than I’ve ever missed anything, and he’s back now and his skin feels so good on mine and I don’t even know what I’m doing as I move my head to look up at him. He looks down at me and it’s as if he knows what I want without me having to tell him because in a second his mouth is on mine and he’s kissing me and every single kiss we’ve ever shared comes washing over me in an instant. Our tongues slide into each others mouths and his fingers grasp the back of my head, his other arm sliding around me, holding me as close to him as he can get me. 

It’s like some otherworldly source has taken over my body and its movements. I’m turning my body, my legs landing on each side of his, my arms sliding around his neck. I can feel how much he wants me when I lower myself into his lap and I cant help the tiny whimper that leaves my mouth and enters his. His hands are on my hips now and he’s kissing me harder. His own hips move, just slightly, slowly, and I whimper again, one of his own falling from his lips onto mine. 

“Sidney,” he says quietly, one of his hands back on the back of my neck. He pulls back just enough to look at me. “You have to tell me to stop. If you don’t want this you have to tell me.”

I shake my head no. I don’t want him to stop, I want this. My entire body wants this. My body is suddenly harshly aware of the fact that it’s been deprived being loved by him for all of these years and now that he’s there again it _needs_ him more than it’s ever needed anything. It’s like I’m in the desert and the only thing that will keep me from dying is Zac, here and now. 

His hands slip beneath my shirt. He slowly pushes it up and I lift my arms so he can pull it off. He looks at me and shakes his head as he blows out and heavy breath. He runs his hands over my breasts, down my sides. He unbuttons my jeans and I lift myself onto my knees so he can slide them down and then I sit so he can pull them the rest of the way off. I suddenly feel so exposed. The only answer I can think of is to reach over and pull his shirt off. It lands on top of mine on the floor and then he stands and he helps me remove his jeans and then he’s back on the couch, lowering me onto my back and lowering himself over me. I know the look he has in his eyes so well, the look that says he’s never wanted anything the way he wants me and I cant help but smile as his lips fall back onto mine and then he’s inside me and I swear fireworks go off behind my eyelids.


	10. Chapter 10

**BEFORE**

Opening the record store was exactly what I needed. It made me feel like I had a purpose in New York aside from just being there along for the ride with Taylor. I wouldn’t say the store was an instant success, but by the end of the first six months we were open we had a steady stream of sales and our books were consistently in the positive instead of the red. By the end of the next six months we were not only making a profit, but we were nearly overwhelmed with how well we were doing.

Just short of three and a half years since Zac had left I had finally put all of the pieces of my life back together. So I wasn’t all that surprised when a curveball was thrown at me.

Jenny was visiting for the weekend, something she tried to do every few months, and we were sitting on the couch in my living room watching old reruns of Three’s Company when I picked up the remote and muted the tv.

“Don’t freak out,” I turned to her.

“Why would I freak out?” 

“I think I’m pregnant.”

Her mouth fell open and she shook her head. “Pregnant?”

“Pregnant,” I repeated. I leaned over to the coffee table where my purse was sitting and pulled a pregnancy test out. “I haven’t taken a test yet. I was waiting for you to be here.”

“Holy shit,” she breathed. “How do you feel about it?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I guess I feel like…we’re not ready. But, it also wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”

“That’s a good way to describe your possible future child,” she grinned. “Not the worst thing in the world.”

“You know what I mean!” I laughed. “We haven’t even really talked about kids, we just got fully settled here and things are going great for us. I wouldn’t be devastated and if I am then I’ll be happy about it, but-”

“I know, it’s never the right time. You’ll never _find_ a right time.”

“I know,” I nodded. “I haven’t even told him that I’m late.”

“Do you think he’ll freak out?”

“No, probably not,” I shook my head. “I think he’d be okay with it.”

“Okay, well,” Jenny clapped her hands together and snatched the box out of my hands. “Let’s do this.”

Five minutes later I was sitting on top of the kitchen counter and Jenny was leaning back in one of the high backed chairs around it. The test was sitting on the counter in between us and neither of us were saying anything. 

I wasn’t expecting Taylor home from the studio for at least a few hours so when the door swung open and he walked in, I was so surprised I couldn’t even think to reach over and grab the test before his eyes landed on it.

He looked from me to Jenny and then back to me again before his eyes fell back on the test. 

“Sidney?” I wanted to make a joke about how he couldn’t name the test stick Sidney because that was my name, but I wasn’t sure it was the right time.

“Yeah?”

“Is that yours?” He was still staring at the stick on the counter.

“Yeah?” My voice came out quieter. I had no idea what to expect. We hadn’t talked about this, it wasn’t even on our radar. 

“Oh,” he said. And then he walked over to me and wrapped his arms around me. “Oh,” he smiled and kissed me.

“I think we should check it,” Jenny piped up, looking over at us. 

“We should check it,” Taylor repeated, nodding his head enthusiastically and I couldn’t help but laugh. I leaned in again and kissed him.

“You check it,” I smiled.

“Yeah?” He looked in between me and the stick and then back to me again.

“Yeah.”

“Alright,” he rubbed his hands together and reached to the middle of the counter. He picked it up and looked at it for a second and then looked at me. His smile fell a little and he shook his head no, putting the test back down on the counter.

“Maybe you need to take another one?” Jenny pushed her stool back and stood up. “I can go buy one.”

“No,” I said, still smiling. “I don’t thin I do.” I looked over at Taylor and reached my arm out to him. He came closer and wrapped his arms around me again. “It’s alright.”

That night in bed, nothing on us but the blanket slung over out bodies, Taylor turned to me.

“I would have been happy.”

“Yeah?” I rolled on to my side and smiled. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I think I’m ready. I think having a baby with you would be the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Well…” I grinned and shrugged a shoulder. “We’re good at practicing?” 

He laughed and rolled on top of me, pushing me onto my back. “We could practice right now.”

\- - -

We practiced. And practiced. And practiced. In fact, if we weren’t experts at the act before, we certainly were becoming them. Every month I found myself hoping that my period wouldn’t come, but every month, like clockwork, it showed up when it was supposed to. For the next four months I wasn’t late even once. I started to wonder if maybe we were moving too fast, despite the fact that it had been years. I thought that maybe there was some otherworldly force making sure we didn’t make this leap yet.

Zac had been gone for three and a half years when I came home from the record store one night to find my apartment completely dark save for a handful of candles spread throughout the living room. I dropped my bag and keys and took a few steps into the room and then Taylor appeared, dressed as if he were going to a black tie event for the record label, but I knew he wasn’t. 

“Welcome home,” he’d smiled, stopping a few feet in front of me. 

“What’s all this?” I motioned around the room.

“I was going to make a big speech,” he cleared his throat. “But, I think I’ll save both of us.”

I opened my mouth to ask him what he was talking about, but before I could he pulled something out of his pocket and sank down on one knee in front of me. He opened the box he was holding and looked up at me.

“Ever since that day I came home and saw that pregnancy test on the table I knew that I wanted to do this,” my heart was beating out of my chest and I was shaking my head. “It took me this long to find the perfect ring, but I finally found it. So, Sidney, will you marry me?”

My head shaking turned quickly to head nodding and I threw myself at him, the both of us landing in a heap on the floor where we kissed and laughed and kissed some more. It didn’t take long for the laughing to turn to heavy breathing and the kissing to turn to _more_ , and it was only thirty minutes later when we were laying completely naked on our New York City rug, my head on Taylor’s chest and his arms around me, that I finally looked up at him.

“Yes,” I said, kissing his jaw. “Of course I’ll marry you.”

\- - -

The day of our engagement party I found myself sitting on the edge of the tub, talking quietly in my mind to Zac. I’d never done that before, but I thought it felt appropriate at the time. I told him that this didn’t mean that I didn’t love him anymore, that I always would, but I had moved on and I knew that in the end that’s exactly what he would have wanted for me. I asked him to not be upset that it was Taylor I had moved on with, instead assured him that Taylor was the best option. We trusted him, we loved him, and he loved us.

When I stepped out of the bathroom and saw Taylor standing there waiting for me I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was making the right decisions for my life. Some people don’t even get lucky enough to find one soul mate and I’d been blessed with two. 

If only I knew then that in little more than twelve hours everything I thought I knew would be tested, maybe I could have prepared myself. Maybe I would have been ready for my past to battle with my future, maybe I’d have handled it better or done things differently. But you can never tell the future, you can only do with the now what you know how. Are you ever really prepared to face your ghosts?


	11. Chapter 11

**NOW**

I open my eyes and remember that we’re on the floor, a heavy afghan pulled over us, couch pillows under our heads. Zac’s arm is slung over my stomach and his face is buried in my hair. I can feel his breath washing over my neck and the goosebumps it’s leaving behind.

I slowly pull myself from his grasp and look around on the floor for something to pull on. His shirt is the winner and I pull it over my head quietly. I make my way to the kitchen and root around in the cabinets until I find what I’m looking for. I have no idea how old this coffee is, but it doesn’t matter. After spending most of the night awake wrapped up in Zac, I need it and I need it now.

Just as I’m finishing pouring cream into my coffee I feel Zac’s arms slide around my waist and I turn around and smile up at him. He looks happy and at peace and it’s truly the first time I don’t see something else hiding inside of his eyes since he’s been back. 

“Would you like a cup of coffee or would you rather just inject some sugar straight into your veins?” I say behind a smile. He just shakes his head and takes my mug out of my hand. He places it on the counter and picks me up quickly, placing me down on the counter. He slides in between my knees and kisses my neck gently.

“Just you,” he mumbles in between kisses. “That’s all I need.”

My heart is bursting and my hands are shaking a little bit. We possibly went one too many rounds last night and I’m not sure my body is equipped for sex right now, but when his hand slides in between us and moves over me in exactly the way he somehow never forgot drives me crazy, my head falls back and a few quiet moans fill the air around us. 

He’s kissing my neck, my shoulder, my collar bone. His fingers slide inside me and I bite down on my lip to stop myself from shouting. His mouth is just pressed against my skin now, his hand bringing me to the edge. I feel my hips moving, guiding my body into the feeling all against my own will. He’s groaning against me as if my own pleasure is providing him with more pleasure than his body can take. 

I say his name and he pulls his hand away and I almost whine at the loss of contact but in seconds he’s inside of me again and my legs wrap around his waist. He’s moving in and out of me and his movements take on a frantic pace and it takes almost no time at all, we’re both falling apart together.

We’re both spent, our foreheads pressed together, puffs of breath washing over each other. He pulls out of me and kisses me. “I’m gonna shower,” he smiles and then he’s gone. 

I sit on the counter and drink my coffee thinking about our past life together, all of the years we were just Sidney and Zac, a solved equation with no other answer to it. We’re so far from where we were once and I can feel tiny pieces of it all falling back into place as the hours in this house pass by us. 

I feel content as I hop off the counter and wash my mug in the sink. I drop it onto the dish rack and start to walk out of the kitchen, but just as I make it past the fridge my eyes catch on a photograph of Taylor hanging underneath a magnet on the freezer. He’s not looking at the camera, he’s looking just out of frame at something and he’s smiling. My eyes start to blur as I stare at the photo for too long. Everything felt perfect ten minutes ago and now it’s crumbling around me again.

\- - -

We’re sitting out back on the deck. The sun is setting, Zac is drinking a soda and I have another mug of coffee between my hands. The day has been pleasant. I’ve been enjoying spending time with him and I could see myself falling back into our old life routine. It would be so easy. We’d go back to living for nothing but one another, maybe he could even go back to his old job. I’d move back into our house in Tulsa and say goodbye to New York and the record store.

My chest constricts at the thought. I love Tulsa but I love living in New York. It’s home now. Zac being back doesn’t really change that. I think a small part of me had thought that it would, but it doesn’t. Does a part of me _want_ it to? Maybe. 

“Zac?” I look over at him and he turns his head to look back at me. He smiles and tilts his head to the side.

“Yeah?”

“Tell me now.”

He sighs and rests his head against the back of his chair and looks up at the sky. We stay this way, him looking up and me looking at him, for several seconds and just when I open my mouth to press him, he starts talking.

“They found me a couple of days after the plane went down. I don’t know exactly where, I don’t like talking about it. But it was in the general area of the plane, obviously.” I can see that he’s struggling to talk about this, but I’m not going to let up. I know that in the long run, he doesn’t _owe_ me anything, but I still feel like he does owe me this. “I was comatose, but somehow alive. They’re not really sure how.” He takes a few breaths. He closes his eyes. I almost think to tell him we can stop but I can’t. I need this. “I was under for a long time…almost two years. And when I woke up I had no idea who I was. I had nothing on me, somehow in the crash I’d lost everything I owned, there was no ID or paperwork with me, I had no idea where I’d come from or how I’d gotten there, and somehow I wound up in the one hospital in the country where no one had ever heard of me.”

He stops for a handful of moments and we just sit in the quiet. He’s still got his head leaned back against the chair and his face turned up. I can’t look away from him. Talking about the plane crash just brings back how lucky he is to be alive - how lucky we all are to have him here. Zac isn’t dead anymore - he never really was - and it feels _so_ good to know that.

“One day about a month before I came home I just woke up one morning and I knew who I was. I knew everything, just all of a sudden, as if it all just came back to me in the middle of the night.”

A month before. The words repeat in my head over and over again until they blur together completely and I can’t hear anything at all anymore. Zac knew who he was and that he was alive and we were at home believing he was dead for a month before he came back to us. I’m trying not to be angry, but I can feel the anger bubbling up inside of me. I’m trying to push it down as best I can. 

“I wasn’t doing well. My mental state was out of sorts. I hadn’t been eating because I felt sick all the time. I didn’t even look like me anymore. When I came home,” he turns his head so he’s still leaning against the back of the chair but he’s looking at me. “To you, I wanted to be…me. I just wanted to get better before…before I come back.” He reaches over and takes my hand in his and all of my anger dissipates. “I begged the doctors not to call anyone. They ended up listening to me and here we are. It really wasn’t all that dramatic or anything. I don’t remember the crash or before it. The last thing I remember is getting on the plane.”

That last visual I had of him, the one I held on to so hard, of him turning and waving to me before walking up the steps to the plane, fills my mind. For so long that was the last memory I had of Zac, the last time I had seen him. It was a treasured look at him that I never wanted to lose. I wonder if now that he’s back and that wont be the last glimpse of him I have anymore if it’ll eventually fade into the background as a memory or if it will remain something that is burned into my brain for the rest of my life. I almost don’t want to know.

“So you were in California all this time?” I say once I’m sure he’s done talking. He nods and squeezes my hand.

“The minute I remembered who I was I wanted to get back here to you. But I wanted to make sure I was healthy first…that I was really the person you remembered. It hasn’t been easy but I don’t mind that, I’m just happy to be alive and here with you.”

“I’m happy too,” I say. I can feel tears stinging my eyes but I don’t want to let them fall. I want to be strong for him just like I’m learning he was strong for me while he was away. I can’t imagine what it would have taken out of him every single day to not come home, not even call, while he got better. 

“Being near you is so hard,” he says and looks back at me. He’s grinning and I’m shaking my head, not understanding. “All those years without you, I can barely control myself.”

Ahh. Now I know what he means. Ever since the first time on the couch last night I’ve been suffering from the same problem a bit. It was like being off alcohol for four years and then getting a sip and not wanting to stop. The way he’s looking at me mixed with the words he just said is making my face and stomach both a little hot. It’s probably wise of us to keep our clothes on and figure out what we’re doing, talk about what kind of future we may be able to have together and decide if that is even what we’re going to do. But, now he’s getting up and he’s taking the two steps between his chair and mine. He reaches for my hand and he gently pulls me out of my seat and wraps his arms around my waist. He pulls me into him and kisses me and the heat starts to bubble a little. 

Without breaking our kiss he lifts me in one smooth motion and wraps my legs around him. He moves us easily into the house and then through it. I’m no longer worried about his strength. I almost laugh about the thought but he’s dropping me onto the bed and climbing over me, pulling his shirt off as he does, and every thought except _want_ leaves.

\- - -

I open my eyes and it’s dark in the room. The clock read five in the morning. I forget where I am for a split second and I expect to see Taylor sleeping next to me when I roll on to my side, but it’s Zac who is there, his eyes closed, his hair over his face.

In the second it takes me to take in Zac’s sleeping form something flips in my brain and suddenly everything is so clear to me. Taylor was right, I needed this time with Zac, just the two of us, with nothing else leaning in on us to figure it all out. I needed to spend the time to be there with him to get my brain to catch up with the situation we were in and figure out where my heart really belonged. Zac was my one true love, there wasn’t anything that could change that. 

I slide out of the bed and pull my clothes on and head to the kitchen. I pull drawers open until I finally find a notebook and a pen and I sit down at the counter and write Zac a short note. I leave it right in the middle of the counter so that he wont miss it when he wakes up and I collect my bag and let myself out of the house.

When I get in the car I fish my phone out of my purse and shoot off a quick message to Isaac asking him to come to the lake house to bring Zac home later in the morning. I say that I have something I need to take care of and I’ll call them later. 

And then I go exactly where I know I need to go.

\- - -

It’s pouring rain and I’m soaked through my clothes. The Uber dropped me off halfway down the block because there was traffic and that’s all it took to make me look like a drowned rat. I’m crouched down on the sidewalk fishing through my bag and I can’t find what I need. I’m about to scream in frustration and throw my entire purse into the road when I hear the door swing open and a second later, his voice.

“Sidney?” It’s confused and quiet. “What are you doing here?”

I look up and I let out a breath of relief. I stand and practically hurl myself at him, leaving both my purse and my bag in the middle of the sidewalk. My arms are around his neck and his are around me, his palms flat on my back.

“My God, you’re soaking wet. Come on, lets go inside.”

He lets go of me and goes and grabs my bags, slinging my purse over his shoulder and wheeling my carryon along behind him. He digs into his pocket and pulls the keys out and unlocks the door. He pulls it open and holds it for me to go inside. We don’t say anything on the elevator ride up to our apartment, only when we’re finally inside and I’m stepping out of my wet shoes does he finally speak again. 

“Why are you here? What’s going on?”

“It’s you,” I look up at him and I know I must look pathetic. My clothes are completely wet through and my hair is hanging down my face in wet strings. I’m exhausted and the mascara I quickly put on on the plane is probably dripping down my face, but I don’t care. “You were right, I needed you to not be there to figure it out, but I’ve figured it out and it’s you. I want you.”

“You want me,” he repeats and I start shaking my head quickly. I close the few feet of space in between us and my arms go around him again. I’m getting his clean, dry clothes all wet, but again, I can’t bring myself to care. I need him to hear me and I need him to understand what I’m saying to him.

“I did what you said and I went with Zac to the lake house and it was fine, it was nice, but it wasn’t…I woke up at five in the morning and I thought you’d be there and you weren’t and I realized that I _want_ you to be there. Every day.”

“Okay,” he says, and it’s that simple. He leans down and he kisses me and everything, all of the doubts and choices and confusion leaves. This is where I’m supposed to be. “Lets get you into some dry clothes,” he says quietly once he pulls back and he leads me to our bedroom, in our apartment in New York, where all of our things are, where _we_ are, together.

\- - -

It’s been a few hours since I got home and we haven’t really talked about it. Taylor made us some food and we sat close together on the couch while we ate. Some part of our bodies touched the entire time as if the both of us were afraid if we weren’t connected in some way one of us would be gone again.

“How did you decide?” He finally asks quietly. He looks hesitantly over at me and I wonder if he doesn’t really want to know, if he’d rather just live in the now and the knowing that it was him that I’d chosen. 

“Waking up without you,” I shrug. “I don’t want to do it again.”

“Did you-” he sighs and looks up at the ceiling for a second and I know what he wants to know.

“Yes.” 

“Okay,” he says. I only realize that I’m holding my breath when his hand slips into mine and I breathe again. “I don’t need to know anything else.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” he nods. “I was hoping you’d realize this and come home, I just didn’t think it would be this soon.”

“I’m surprised it took this long,” I say back. Suddenly now that I’m sitting there with him I don’t know how I didn’t know this all along. There wasn’t any part of me that wanted to go back in time to before Taylor and I had what we had now. He’d been the one by my side for the last four years, he was the one who had put me back together when I had fallen apart. Zac was my one true love, once, but Taylor was my one true love now. The weird thing I was learning about one true loves was that it was possible to not only have one of them.

\- - -

It’s just after ten and Taylor is sleeping next to me and I know that there is one more thing that I have to do. I’m not looking forward to it, but it would be wrong of me not to. So I slip out of bed and I grab my phone off the nightstand and go out into the living room. I sit down on the couch and turn my phone on and click on Zac’s name and put the phone to my ear.

At first I don’t think he’s going to pick up, the phone rings too many times, but then he does.

“You’re in New York,” he says. He doesn’t sound angry.

“Yeah,” I pull my legs up onto the couch and wrap my arm around my knees. “I’m in New York.”

“So you’ve decided then,” it’s not a question. I wonder where is he. If he stayed at the lake house or he went back to his parents. I expected anger from him, but I’m not getting it, and I’m happy about that.

“I’m sorry, Zac.”

“Don’t be,” his voice is quiet and I imagine that means he’s back at home. I don’t ask and he doesn’t tell, I guess it doesn’t really matter. “I guess I always knew.”

I don’t say anything. I don’t know _what_ to say. I didn’t have a plan when I made this phone call, I just knew that I had to make it. I wasn’t not with Zac because I didn’t love him or I didn’t care about him, it’s just that he’s not where all of my heart is anymore. He might not have left me on purpose or of his own will, but he left me all the same and I learned how to move on and make a new life without him. That life was still here, even if he was back now too.

“As long as you’re happy, I’m happy,” he says finally and I feel my face break out into a smile. 

“I’m happy.”

“Just promise me one thing,” I can hear the hint of amusement in his voice and my chest is bursting. Maybe everyone can go forward and be happy from here, maybe no one needs to end up broken.

“Anything.”

“I expect to be invited to the wedding.”

I laugh and then he laughs and everything feels okay. All of us are going to be just fine.


	12. Chapter 12

**NOW**

We just got married. Taylor is across the room surrounded by family. Every one is laughing and drinking, dancing and enjoying themselves. I had slipped away to use the bathroom, my bladder hating me, and now I’m standing in the doorway to the hall we rented to throw this party. I’m leaning against it, my arms crossed over my simple off-white cocktail dress, watching. Taylor looks so happy, like this is actually the best day of his life, and I feel that feeling too. I feel like forever just started and it’s going to be so good.

“Taking a breather?”

I turn and smile. Zac is wearing a simple grey suit, no tie. He’s holding a flute of champagne in his hand and he’s smiling at me. “Yeah. Had to run to the bathroom.”

“It’s a beautiful wedding,” he says. He reaches out and clasps my shoulder. “Really. I’m so happy for you guys.”

“Your date is gorgeous,” I look across the room to where Zac’s date is sitting at a table with Isaac. They’re chatting and laughing and she’s truly a stunner. I don’t know much about them, just that they’ve been seeing each other for a couple of months. 

“She is, isn’t she?” He smiles and drops his hand from my shoulder. 

“Are you happy, Zac?” I look up at him and I hope so badly that he is. I need to know he’s happy so that the last, tiny string keeping my present from being the only thing that matters can be cut. 

“I am,” he nods. “Are you?”

“God, yes,” I breathe and then we both laugh quietly. “I’m sorry it didn’t…you know, work, after-”

“No, Sid,” he puts a fingertip to my lips and shakes his head. “This is what’s right for you,” he motions across the room at Taylor. “You two are perfect for each other. We were perfect for each other once, but we’re not anymore. This is where you belong.”

It takes no time for the first tear to fall and I throw my arms around him. I take in his new smell which is different from his old smell and I let out a small laugh. I’ll always love Zac, he will always be the first person I had ever loved and every huge and small thing that happened between us to connect us will always be there, but that was our past life. In this life I belong with Taylor and Zac is finding out where he belongs and that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. 

I pull back from Zac and wipe my eyes. 

“I better get back to my date,” he nods across the room with his head. “And you’d better get back to your new husband.”

I nod and smile and we walk in the room together. Taylor turns and smiles at me as I get closer and he opens his arms for me to step into. The rest of the room falls away and for the hundredth time that day I know I made the right choice. I know this is the path. 

“I have something for you,” I look up at him and he tilts his head.

“Something more than all of this?” He laughs. 

“Oh yeah, something more.”

I step back a foot and I pull my gift for him out of the neck line of my dress, the only place I could find to store it when I was getting ready. I hand it to him and he turns it over. He looks it over and then looks back at me and he’s shaking his head.

“Is this?”

“Five months,” I say. “I guess with everything going on I didn’t even notice that I was late…for months. I found out a few weeks ago but I wanted to tell you today.”

“Five months,” he repeats. “We’re having a baby? For real this time?”

I nod and he cheers and picks me up off my feet and spins me around. He puts me back on my feet and grabs my hand. “Hey everybody!” He calls out to the room and everyone looks at us. He tells them the news and the whole room breaks out in applause. My eyes settle on Zac and he’s smiling and clapping with everyone else. He nods at me and mouths ‘congrats’.

I turn back to Taylor and he turns back to me and the rest of the room disappears. “Should we get a dog too? I feel like we should get a dog,” he says and I throw my head back and laugh. Whatever Taylor wanted to do, we could do. I’d go along with anything he wanted as long as we did it together. I guess thats what happens when you find your second one true love, you follow them anywhere.


End file.
